self awareness in primates: Fact or Fiction Essay

After reading through chapter six, I began reading chapter seven of our psychology text titled, Learning. Learning is something we do everyday even we don’t realize it. While reading chapter seven, I learned that there are three different types of learning, classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and cognitive learning. Classical conditioning stands for two types of stimuli linking providing us the tools to have a reaction; this is the type of learning that involves automatic behaviors. Operant conditioning is the type of learning that causes a change in behavior, in reaction to consequences; this is the behavior that involves choosing of choices. Lastly, cognitive learning is the obtaining of new skills, behaviors, and information through

I agree as well with the theory that “seeing is doing.” Your example of a baby learning to walk is a very realistic example of how humans and monkeys learned to adopt the feelings and actions of others. From my opinion,

BibliographyBooks1.Burt, C. (1962). The concept of consciousness. British Journal of Psychology, 53, 229-2422.Carlson, N., & Buskist, W. (1997). Psychology: The science of behavior (5th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Bor uses the factual evidence that “every person on the planet, on average, consumes twice his or her weight in animal-derived food each year” (Bor) to set the stage form this controversial topic that hangs on the question of consciousness. Bor once again makes the audience read the entire section on animal rights before revealing his stance on the issue; Bor claims to be a vegetarian which shows the reader that he believes animals experience consciousness to the point where they should not be consumed as a food source. He presents the question how many animals actually have the brain regions required for consciousness? Bor then answers that most mammals have developed these structures and saying that this is “suggesting strongly that they too have some significant levels of consciousness” (Bor). He then references several animals how have been observed to use tools and “demonstrate a mental life that many would classify as conscious” (Bor) such as a crow or an octopus. Bor refers to several test done to various species to determine their self-consciousness and metacognition. The self-awareness test revealed “chimpanzees, orangutans, gorillas, dolphins, elephants, and pigs” (Bor) to have some degree of self-awareness while the metacognition test revealed that “great apes and monkeys” (Bor) show metacognition. Bor uses these results to support his ideals that “ethically consistent for us to extend

Learning is the main process by which children acquire behaviour and understanding from the environment. Children learn in various ways and acquire new ways in learning, as they get older.

According to Martin Schonfield in “Animal Consciousness: Paradigm Change in the Life Sciences” “In the old analytic climate, claims that animals are sentient raised methodological and ideological problems and seemed debatable at best.”(Schonfield p. 1) Claims that animals were self-aware or intelligent were regarded as unfounded. “The task of science in the past four centuries had been to demythologize the past.”(Schonfield p.1) Daniel C. Dennett in “Animal Consciousness: What Matters and Why” states “that speculating about animal consciousness makes no sense.” (Dennett p.19) He wonders why we need to know about animal consciousness at all. I disagree with Dennett and will explore the possibilities of animals actually experiencing

Cetacean intelligence has been studied for many years both in captivity and in the wild. A milestone discovery in cetacean intelligence is self-awareness. An experiment was conducted with two male captive bottlenose dolphins in New York Aquarium. The dolphins were marked on a part of their body that was not visible without a mirror. After being

The rarity of human uniqueness no longer exists in the thoughts of scientists believing that human ability skills lie within the construction and use of tools. As declared by Goodall in which chimpanzees used straight sticks after removing the leaves and branches to collect termites or ants for consumption. (Goodall, 1986) Other species both primate and non-primate demonstrate successful abilities., which include a sense of self as well as the theory of mind, by which other species recognize that other individuals contain different information than themselves. Different species also have the ability to communicate symbolically to one another through the sounds of vocalization. (Sapolsky R. M., 2006)

Learning is the process of gaining knowledge or skills through study, experience or teaching. It is a process that depends on experience and leads to long-term changes in the possible behaviour of an individual in a given situation, in order to achieve a goal.

Monkeys can lean to use symbols and numbers and can understand aspects of human language.

For example, imitation and teaching explain that chimpanzee’s may watch their mother doing actions academically (problem-solving) she never gives her young enough feedback or just a simple look to reinforce his observation. He concludes by explaining that humans have a preexisting capacity that allows them to represent what they imagine by combining human elements (language) while, animals clearly do not.

In very earlier research, the theory developed by Wicklund (1975, 1978, 1979) defines self-awareness mostly as one’s ability to self-observe. That person will base on certain standard or new information to judge his own behavior (as cited in

Third, Singer states that, “apes, monkeys, dogs, cats, rats, and other animals are more aware of what is happening to them, more self‐directing, and at least as sensitive to pain as a human infant.”(Page 2, Tools for Research) Singer is quick to assign cognitive motives to observed

     Psychologists have preformed many studies and proposed many theories regarding learning. Learning can be defined as a relatively permanent change in behavior that is due to past experience.

Learning itself, cannot be observed as it is a hypothetical concept, but behavioural changes can be observed which lead to the assessment and understanding of what learning has taken place. Therefore when Psychologists use the term learning, they are referring to the process of learning, i.e. that technique or strategy which has been used to facilitate the learning.