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Serial List Retention by Non-Human Primates: Complexity and Cognitive Continuity

  • Chapter
The Complex Mind

Abstract

One implication of such quotations is that understanding complex issues is enhanced by preliminary knowledge of simpler component processes. In the present instance, research on memory organisation in animals is encouraged as a tactic to allow insights into integrative operations underlying cognitive processes in other species. It should be noted that here the appeal to simplicity derives, not from reductionist rationale, but from the prospect that animal research provides advantages in experimental control and precision of measurement. In his comparative treatments, Charles Darwin (1859, 1988) used the terms ‘organs’ and ‘instincts’ when referring to anatomy and behaviour, respectively. He stated that: ‘I can see no difficulty in natural selection preserving and continually accumulating variations of instinct to any extent that may be profitable. It is thus, that I believe, that all the most complex and wonderful instincts have originated.’ Accordingly, it seems just as appropriate to seek animal analogues of complex behaviours as to study the evolution of morphology.

Increasingly, people seem to misinterpret complexity as sophistication, which is baffling — the incomprehensible should cause suspicion rather than admiration. Possibly this trend results from a mistaken belief that using a somewhat mysterious device confers an aura of power on the user.

Niklaus Wirth, computer scientist; inventor of Pascal language

Out of intense complexities, intense simplicities emerge.

Winston Churchill

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Authors
  1. F. Robert Treichler
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Oxford, UK

    David McFarland

  2. University of Edinburgh, UK

    Keith Stenning  & Maggie McGonigle-Chalmers  & 

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© 2012 F. Robert Treichler

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Treichler, F.R. (2012). Serial List Retention by Non-Human Primates: Complexity and Cognitive Continuity. In: McFarland, D., Stenning, K., McGonigle-Chalmers, M. (eds) The Complex Mind. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230354456_2

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