Syllabus
1) What is cognitive ethology? Definition of the discipline, its aims, methods and questions addressed.
2) Perception, sensory specialisation, object perception, perceptual completion, signal detection theory.
3) Attention, limited and divided attantion, searching images.
4) Learning, habituation, imprinting, associative learning, classical and operant conditioning, insight learning, adaptive specialisation, learning as phenotypic plasticity.
5) Recognition, discrimination, and categorisation, generalisation and peak shift, abstraction.
6) Memory, coding, storing, and retrieving of information, working and reference memory, short-term and long-term memory, episodic memory.
7) Spatial orientation, landmarks, routes, and cognitive maps, navigation.
8) Social learning, innovations, observation conditioning, emulation, imitation, traditions, teaching.
9) Physical cognition and tool using, tool manufacture.
10) Design and recognition of signals, coevolution of signals and recognition mechanisms.
Annotation
The Cognitive Ethology course represents a comparative approach to cognitive aspects of animal behaviour. Cognitive Ethology integrates diverse approaches to the study of mechanisms involved in acquisition, processing, storing, and using information from the environment, with an accent on ecological and evolutionary context of cognitive mechanisms.
Lecture is intended for MSc students of zoology. Please note, the lectures are given in Czech language.
English version of the course can be requested in advance if there are at least 5 students.