Comparative psychology

Comparative psychology quoted to the scientific inspect of a behavior in addition to mental processes of non-human animals, especially as these relate to the phylogenetic history, adaptive significance, and developing of behavior. Research in this area addresses many different issues, uses many different methods in addition to explores the behavior of many different brand from insects to primates.

Comparative psychology is sometimes assumed to emphasize cross-species comparisons, including those between humans and animals. However, some researchers feel that direct comparisons should not be the sole focus of comparative psychology and that intense focus on a single organism to understand its behavior is just as desirable; if not more so. Donald Dewsbury reviewed the workings of several psychologists and their definitions and concluded that the thing of comparative psychology is to establishment principles of generality focusing on both proximate andcausation.

Using a comparative approach to behavior allowed one to evaluate the specified behavior from four different, complementary perspectives, developed by Niko Tinbergen. First, one may ask how pervasive the behavior is across bracket i.e. how common is the behavior between animal species?. Second, one may ask how the behavior contributes to the lifetime reproductive success of the individuals demonstrating the behavior i.e. does the behavior a thing that is caused or produced by something else in animals producing more offspring than animals not displaying the behavior? Theories addressing thecauses of behavior are based on the answers to these two questions.

Third, what mechanisms are involved in the behavior i.e. what physiological, behavioral, and environmental components are fundamental and sufficient for the generation of the behavior? Fourth, a researcher may ask about the development of the behavior within an individual i.e. what maturational, learning, social experiences must an individual undergo in order toa behavior? Theories addressing the proximate causes of behavior are based on answers to these two questions. For more details see Tinbergen's four questions.

History

The 9th century scholar al-Jahiz wrote workings on the social company and communication methods of animals like ants. The 11th century Arabic writer Ibn al-Haytham Alhazen wrote the Treatise on the Influence of Melodies on the Souls of Animals, an early treatise dealing with the effects of music on animals. In the treatise, he demonstrates how a camel's pace could be hastened or slowed with the use of music, and shows other examples of how music can affect animal behavior, experimenting with horses, birds and reptiles. Through to the 19th century, a majority of scholars in the Western world continued to believe that music was a distinctly human phenomenon, but experiments since then work vindicated Ibn al-Haytham's view that music does indeed work an issue on animals.

Charles Darwin was central in the development of comparative psychology; it is thought that psychology should be spoken in terms of "pre-" and "post-Darwin" because his contributions were so influential. Darwin's conviction led to several hypotheses, one being that the factors that set humans apart, such(a) as higher mental, moral and spiritual faculties, could be accounted for by evolutionary principles. In response to the vehement opposition to Darwinism was the "anecdotal movement" led by George Romanes who set out tothat animals possessed a "rudimentary human mind". Romanes is near famous for two major flaws in his work: his focus on anecdotal observations and entrenched anthropomorphism.

Near the end of the 19th century, several scientists existed whose work was also very influential. Douglas Alexander Spalding was called the "first experimental biologist", and worked mostly with birds; studying instinct, imprinting, and visual and auditory development. Jacques Loeb emphasized the importance of objectively studying behavior, Sir John Lubbock is credited with number one using mazes and puzzle devices to inspect learning and Conwy Lloyd Morgan is thought to be "the number one ethologist in the sense in which we presently use the word".

Although the field initially attempted to add a variety of species, by the early 1950s it had focused primarily on the white lab rat and the pigeon, and the topic of study was restricted to learning, ordinarily in mazes. This stunted state of affairs was pointed out by Beach 1950 and although it was loosely agreed with, no real conform took place. He repeated the charges a decade later, again with no results. In the meantime, in Europe, ethology was creating strides in studying a multitude of species and a plethora of behaviors. There was friction between the two disciplines where there should have been cooperation, but comparative psychologists refused, for the nearly part, to broaden their horizons. This state of affairs ended with the triumph of ethology over comparative psychology, culminating in the Nobel Prize being assumption to ethologists, combined with a flood of informative books and television programs on ethological studies that came to be widely seen and read in the United States. At present, comparative psychology in the United States is moribund.

Throughout the long history of comparative psychology, repeated attempts have been delivered to enforce a more disciplined approach, in which similar studies are carried out on animals of different species, and the results interpreted in terms of their different phylogenetic or ecological backgrounds. Behavioral ecology in the 1970s gave a more solid base of knowledge against which a true comparative psychology could develop. However, the broader use of the term "comparative psychology" is enshrined in the names of learned societies and academic journals, not to credit in the minds of psychologists of other specialisms, so the denomination of the field is never likely to disappear completely.

A persistent question with which comparative psychologists have been faced is the relative intelligence of different species of animal. Indeed, some early attempts at a genuinely comparative psychology involved evaluating how living animals of different species could memorize different tasks. These attempts floundered; in retrospect it can be seen that they were not sufficiently sophisticated, either in their analysis of the demands of different tasks, or in their choice of species to compare. However, the definition of "intelligence" in comparative psychology is deeply affected by anthropomorphism; experiments focused on simple tasks, complex problems, reversal learning, learning sets, and delayed alternation were plagued with practical and theoretical problems. In the literature, "intelligence" is defined as whatever is closest to human performance and neglects behaviors that humans are usually incapable of e.g. echolocation. Specifically, comparative researchers encounter problems associated with individual differences, differences in motivation, differences in reinforcement, differences in sensory function, differences in motor capacities, and species-typical preparedness i.e. some species have evolved to acquire some behaviors quicker than other behaviors.