Are There Differences in “Intelligence” Between Nonhuman Species? The Role of Contextual Variables

We review evidence for Macphail’s (1982, 1985, 1987) Null Hypothesis, that nonhumans animals do not differ either qualitatively or quantitatively in their cognitive capacities. Our review supports the Null Hypothesis in so much as there are no qualitative differences among nonhuman vertebrate animal...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Colombo, Michael, Scarf, Damian
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2020
Materias:
Psychology
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7471122/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32973624
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.02072
_version_ 1783578716781150208
author Colombo, Michael
Scarf, Damian
author_facet Colombo, Michael
Scarf, Damian
author_sort Colombo, Michael
collection PubMed
description We review evidence for Macphail’s (1982, 1985, 1987) Null Hypothesis, that nonhumans animals do not differ either qualitatively or quantitatively in their cognitive capacities. Our review supports the Null Hypothesis in so much as there are no qualitative differences among nonhuman vertebrate animals, and any observed differences along the qualitative dimension can be attributed to failures to account for contextual variables. We argue species do differ quantitatively, however, and that the main difference in “intelligence” among animals lies in the degree to which one must account for contextual variables.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-7471122
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2020
publisher Frontiers Media S.A.
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-74711222020-09-23 Are There Differences in “Intelligence” Between Nonhuman Species? The Role of Contextual Variables Colombo, Michael Scarf, Damian Front Psychol Psychology We review evidence for Macphail’s (1982, 1985, 1987) Null Hypothesis, that nonhumans animals do not differ either qualitatively or quantitatively in their cognitive capacities. Our review supports the Null Hypothesis in so much as there are no qualitative differences among nonhuman vertebrate animals, and any observed differences along the qualitative dimension can be attributed to failures to account for contextual variables. We argue species do differ quantitatively, however, and that the main difference in “intelligence” among animals lies in the degree to which one must account for contextual variables. Frontiers Media S.A. 2020-08-21 /pmc/articles/PMC7471122/ /pubmed/32973624 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.02072 Text en Copyright © 2020 Colombo and Scarf. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Colombo, Michael
Scarf, Damian
Are There Differences in “Intelligence” Between Nonhuman Species? The Role of Contextual Variables
title Are There Differences in “Intelligence” Between Nonhuman Species? The Role of Contextual Variables
title_full Are There Differences in “Intelligence” Between Nonhuman Species? The Role of Contextual Variables
title_fullStr Are There Differences in “Intelligence” Between Nonhuman Species? The Role of Contextual Variables
title_full_unstemmed Are There Differences in “Intelligence” Between Nonhuman Species? The Role of Contextual Variables
title_short Are There Differences in “Intelligence” Between Nonhuman Species? The Role of Contextual Variables
title_sort are there differences in “intelligence” between nonhuman species? the role of contextual variables
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7471122/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32973624
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.02072
work_keys_str_mv AT colombomichael aretheredifferencesinintelligencebetweennonhumanspeciestheroleofcontextualvariables
AT scarfdamian aretheredifferencesinintelligencebetweennonhumanspeciestheroleofcontextualvariables

Ejemplares similares