EntranceHuman rational activity. Rational activity or elementary thinking of animals as a form of behavior regulation
The presence of elements of intelligence in higher animals is currently beyond doubt among any scientist. Intelligent behavior represents the pinnacle mental development animals. At the same time, as noted by L.V. Krushinsky, it is not something out of the ordinary, but only one of the manifestations of complex forms of behavior with their innate and acquired aspects. Intellectual behavior is not only closely related to various forms instinctive behavior and learning, but also itself consists of individually variable components of behavior. It provides the greatest adaptive effect and promotes the survival of individuals and procreation during sudden, rapid changes in the environment. At the same time, the intelligence of even the highest animals is undoubtedly at a lower stage of development than human intelligence, therefore it would be more correct to call it elementary thinking, or the rudiments of thinking. The biological study of this problem has come a long way; all the major scientists have invariably returned to it. The history of the study of elementary thinking in animals has already been discussed in the first sections of this manual, so in this chapter we will only try to systematize the results of its experimental study.
Definition of human thinking and intelligence
Before talking about the elementary thinking of animals, it is necessary to clarify how psychologists define human thinking and intelligence. Currently, in psychology there are several definitions of these complex phenomena, however, since this problem is beyond the scope of our training course, we will limit ourselves to the most general information.
According to the point of view of A.R. Luria, “the act of thinking arises only when the subject has a corresponding motive that makes the task relevant and its solution necessary, and when the subject finds himself in a situation for which he does not have a ready-made solution - habitual (i.e. acquired in learning process) or innate."
Thinking is the most complex form of human mental activity, the pinnacle of its evolutionary development. A very important apparatus of human thinking, which significantly complicates its structure, is speech, which allows you to encode information using abstract symbols.
The term "intelligence" is used in both a broad and narrow sense. In a broad sense, intelligence is the sum of all cognitive functions of the individual, from sensation and perception to thinking and imagination; in a narrower sense, intelligence is thinking itself.
In the process of a person’s cognition of reality, psychologists note three main functions of intelligence:
● ability to learn;
● operating with symbols;
● ability to actively master patterns environment.
Psychologists distinguish the following forms of human thinking:
● visually effective, based on the direct perception of objects in the process of acting with them;
● figurative, based on ideas and images;
● inductive, based on logical inference “from the particular to the general” (construction of analogies);
● deductive, based on a logical conclusion “from general to particular” or “from particular to particular”, made in accordance with the rules of logic;
● abstract-logical, or verbal, thinking, which is the most complex form.
Human verbal thinking is inextricably linked with speech. It is thanks to speech, i.e. to the second signaling system, human thinking becomes generalized and mediated.
It is generally accepted that the thinking process is carried out using the following mental operations - analysis, synthesis, comparison, generalization and abstraction. The result of the human thinking process is concepts, judgments and conclusions.
The problem of animal intelligence
Intellectual behavior is the pinnacle of animal mental development. However, speaking about the intelligence, the “mind” of animals, it is necessary to first of all note that it is extremely difficult to indicate precisely which animals can be discussed as having intellectual behavior and which ones cannot. Obviously, we can only talk about higher vertebrates, but clearly not only about primates, as was accepted until recently. At the same time, the intellectual behavior of animals is not something isolated, out of the ordinary, but only one of the manifestations of a single mental activity with its innate and acquired aspects. Intellectual behavior is not only closely connected with various forms of instinctive behavior and learning, but is itself composed (on an innate basis) of individually variable components of behavior. It is the highest result and manifestation of individual accumulation of experience, a special category of learning with its inherent qualitative features. Therefore, intellectual behavior gives the greatest adaptive effect, which A.N. Severtsov paid special attention to, showing the decisive importance of higher mental abilities for the survival of individuals and procreation during sudden, rapidly occurring changes in the environment.
The prerequisite and basis for the development of animal intelligence is manipulation, primarily with biologically “neutral” objects. This especially applies to monkeys, for whom manipulation serves as a source of the most complete information about the properties and structure of the objective components of the environment, because during manipulation the most profound and comprehensive acquaintance with new objects or new properties of objects already familiar to the animal occurs. During manipulation, especially when performing complex manipulations, the experience of the animal’s activity is generalized, generalized knowledge about the objective components of the environment is formed, and it is this generalized motor-sensory experience that forms the main basis of the intelligence of monkeys.
Destructive actions are of particular cognitive value, as they allow one to obtain information about the internal structure of objects. When manipulated, the animal receives information simultaneously through a number of sensory channels, but the combination of skin-muscular sensitivity of the hands with visual sensations is of predominant importance. As a result, animals receive complex information about the object as a single whole and having different qualities. This is precisely the meaning of manipulation as the basis of intellectual behavior.
An extremely important prerequisite for intellectual behavior is the ability to widely transfer skills to new situations. This ability is fully developed in higher vertebrates, although it manifests itself in different animals to varying degrees. The abilities of higher vertebrates for various manipulations, for broad sensory generalization, for solving complex problems and transferring complex skills to new situations, for full orientation and adequate response in a new environment on the basis of previous experience are the most important elements of animal intelligence. And yet, by themselves, these qualities are still insufficient to serve as criteria for the intelligence and thinking of animals.
A distinctive feature of animal intelligence is that in addition to the reflection of individual things, there is a reflection of their relationships and connections. This reflection occurs in the process of activity, which, according to Leontiev, is two-phase in structure.
As intellectual forms of behavior develop, the phases of problem solving acquire a clear variety of qualities: the activity, previously merged into a single process, is differentiated into a preparation phase and an implementation phase. It is the preparation phase that constitutes characteristic feature intellectual behavior. The second phase includes a certain operation, fixed in the form of a skill.
Of great importance as one of the criteria of intellectual behavior is the fact that when solving a problem the animal does not use one stereotypically performed method, but tries different ways, which are the result of previously accumulated experience. Consequently, instead of trying various movements, as is the case with non-intellectual actions, with intellectual behavior there are tests various operations, which allows you to solve the same problem in different ways. Transference and testing of various operations when solving a complex problem is expressed in monkeys, in particular, in the fact that they almost never use tools in exactly the same way.
Along with all this, we must clearly imagine the biological limitations of animal intelligence. Like all other forms of behavior, it is entirely determined by the way of life and purely biological laws, the boundaries of which even the smartest monkey cannot step over.
In conclusion, we have to admit that the problem of animal intelligence has not yet been completely studied enough. Essentially, detailed experimental studies have so far been carried out only on monkeys, mainly higher ones, while there is still almost no evidence-based experimental data on the possibility of intellectual actions in other vertebrates. However, it is doubtful that intelligence is unique to primates.
Human thinking and rational activity of animals
According to leading Russian psychologists, the following signs may be criteria for the presence of the rudiments of thinking in animals:
● "emergency appearance of a response in the absence ready-made solution"(Luria);
● “cognitive identification of objective conditions essential for action” (Rubinstein);
● “the generalized, indirect nature of the reflection of reality; the search and discovery of something essentially new” (Brushlinsky);
● “the presence and implementation of intermediate goals” (Leontyev).
Human thinking has a number of synonyms, such as “mind”, “intelligence”, “reason”, etc. However, when using these terms to describe the thinking of animals, it is necessary to keep in mind that, no matter how complex their behavior is, we can only talk about the elements and rudiments of the corresponding mental functions of humans.
The most correct is the one proposed by L.V. Krushinsky's term rational activity. It allows us to avoid identifying the thought processes of animals and humans. Most characteristic property The rational activity of animals is their ability to grasp the simplest empirical laws connecting objects and phenomena of the environment, and the ability to operate with these laws when constructing behavior programs in new situations.
Rational activity is different from any form of learning. This form of adaptive behavior can be carried out when the organism first encounters an unusual situation created in its habitat. The fact that an animal can immediately, without special training, decide to adequately perform a behavioral act is the unique feature of rational activity as an adaptive mechanism in diverse, constantly changing environmental conditions. Rational activity allows us to consider the adaptive functions of the body not only as self-regulating, but also self-selecting systems. This means the body’s ability to make an adequate choice of the most biologically appropriate forms of behavior in new situations. According to the definition of L.V. Krushinsky, rational activity is the performance by an animal of an adaptive behavioral act in an emergency situation. This unique way of adapting an organism to its environment is possible in animals with a well-developed nervous system.
One of the vast “blank spots” in school textbooks is information about the behavioral characteristics of animals. Meanwhile, it is behavior that is the most important feature that allows animals to adapt to the whole variety of environmental factors; it is certain behavioral acts that ensure the survival of the species both in natural conditions, and in an environment modified by human economic activity.
The “universality” of behavior as the basis for adaptation to external conditions is possible because it is based on three complementary mechanisms. The first one is instincts , i.e. hereditarily programmed acts of behavior that are practically identical in all individuals of a given species, which reliably ensure the existence under typical conditions for the species .
The second mechanism is learning ability , which helps to successfully adapt to specific features of the environment that an individual encounters . Habits, skills, and conditioned reflexes are formed in each animal individually, depending on the real circumstances of its life.
For a long time it was believed that animal behavior is regulated only by these two mechanisms. However, the amazing expediency of behavior in many situations that are completely atypical for the species and arise for the first time, sometimes completely unexpectedly, forced both scientists and simply observant people to assume that animals also have access to elements reason – the ability of an individual to successfully solve completely new problems in a situation where she had no opportunity to either follow instinct or benefit from previous experience .
As you know, the formation of conditioned reflexes takes time; they are formed gradually, with repeated repetitions. In contrast, the mind allows you to act correctly the first time, without prior preparation. This is the least studied aspect of animal behavior (it for a long time has been – and partly remains – the subject of debate) and will form the main topic of this article.
Scientists call animal intelligence differently: thinking, intelligence, reason or rational activity. As a rule, the word “elementary” is added, because no matter how “smart” animals behave, only a few elements of human thinking are available to them.
Most general definition thinking represents it as an indirect and generalized reflection of reality, providing knowledge about the most essential properties, connections and relationships of the objective world. It is assumed that the basis of thinking is the arbitrary operation of images. A.R. Luria clarifies that the act of thinking occurs in a situation for which there is no “ready-made” solution. We also give the formulation of L.V. Krushinsky, who defines some aspects of this complex process more narrowly. In his opinion, thinking, or the rational activity of animals, is the ability “to grasp the simplest empirical laws connecting objects and phenomena of the environment, and the ability to operate with these laws when constructing a program of behavior in new situations.”
It should be noted that in the natural environment animals do not have to solve new problems very often - because thanks to instincts and the ability to learn, they are well adapted to normal living conditions. But sometimes they still do non-standard situations arise. And then the animal, if it really has the rudiments of thinking, invents something new to get out of the situation.
When people talk about the intelligence of animals, they usually first of all mean dogs and monkeys. But we'll start with other examples. There are many stories about the intelligence and intelligence of crows and their relatives - birds of the corvid family. The fact that they can throw stones into a vessel with a small amount of water in order to bring its level closer to the edges and get drunk was also mentioned by Pliny and Aristotle. The English naturalist Francis Bacon saw and described how a raven used this technique. Our contemporary told us exactly the same story, who grew up in a remote village in Ukraine and had not read either Aristotle or Bacon. But as a child, he watched in amazement as the hand-made little pebble he had raised threw pebbles into a jar, at the bottom of which there was a little water. When its level rose sufficiently, the little jackdaw drank (Fig. 1). So, apparently, when faced with such a situation, different birds solve the problem in a similar way.
Corvids resort to a similar solution when they need to swim. In one of the American laboratories, rooks liked to splash around in a recess in the cement floor near the hole for water drainage. The researchers were able to observe that in hot weather, one of the rooks, after washing the enclosure, plugged the hole with a stopper before all the water had time to drain.
Traditionally, the raven is considered a particularly intelligent bird (although there is practically no experimental evidence that it is in any way different from other corvids in this regard). A number of examples of intelligent behavior of ravens in new situations are given by the American researcher B. Heinrich, who for many years observed these birds in remote areas of Maine. Heinrich proposed a mentality task for birds living in captivity in large enclosures. Two hungry crows were offered pieces of meat suspended from a branch on long cords, so that it was impossible to simply reach them with their beaks. Both adult birds coped with the task immediately, without making any preliminary tests, but each in their own way. One, sitting on a branch in one place, pulled the rope with its beak and intercepted it, holding each new loop with its paw. The other, pulling out the rope, pressed it with her paw, and she walked back to the branch for some distance and then pulled out the next portion. Interestingly, a similar way to get unavailable bait in the 1970s. observed in reservoirs near Moscow: gray crows pulled fishing line out of holes for ice fishing and thus got to the fish.
However, the most convincing evidence of that that animals have the rudiments of thinking were obtained through the study of our closest relatives - chimpanzees. Their ability to solve unexpected problems has been convincingly demonstrated in the works of L.A. Firsova. Young chimpanzees Lada and Neva, born and raised in the vivarium of the institute in Koltushi, developed a whole chain of completely non-standard actions in order to get the keys to their cage forgotten by the laboratory assistant in the room and go free. The chimpanzees broke off a piece of the tabletop from a table that had been standing in the enclosure for several years, then, using this stick, they pulled a curtain towards themselves from a window remote from the enclosure. Having torn off the curtain, they threw it like a lasso and eventually caught it and pulled the keys towards them. Well, they knew how to open a lock with a key before. Subsequently, they willingly reproduced the entire chain of actions again, demonstrating that they did not act by chance, but in accordance with a definite plan.
J. Goodall is a famous English ethologist who accustomed chimpanzees to her presence and for several decades studied their behavior in natural conditions (Fig. 2.), collected many facts that testify to the intelligence of these animals, their ability to urgently, “on the fly.” » invent unexpected solutions to new problems. One of the most famous and impressive episodes involves the struggle of the young male Mike to achieve dominant status. After many days of fruitless attempts to attract attention with the help of demonstrations common to chimpanzees, he grabbed kerosene cans lying nearby and began to rattle them to intimidate competitors. The resistance was broken, and he not only achieved his goal, but remained dominant for many years. To consolidate his success, he repeated this technique from time to time, which brought him victory (Fig. 3, 4).
Mike turned out to be the hero of another story. One day he hesitated for a long time to take a banana from Goodall’s hands. Furious and excited by his own indecision, he tore and threw the grass. When he saw how one of the blades of grass accidentally touched the banana in the woman’s hands, the hysteria immediately gave way to efficiency - Mike broke off a thin branch and immediately threw it, then he took a fairly long and strong stick and “knocked” the banana out of the experimenter’s hands. Seeing another banana in Goodall’s hands, he didn’t hesitate a minute.
Along with this, Goodall (like a number of other authors) describes the manifestations one more, an aspect of thinking discovered in laboratory experiments, is the ability of chimpanzees to plan (like Lada and Neva) multi-move combinations to achieve a set goal. She describes, for example, the various tricks (each time depending on the situation) of the teenage male Figan, which he invented in order not to share his prey with competitors. For example, he led them away from a container of bananas, which only he knew how to open, and then returned and quickly ate everything himself.
These and many other facts led Goodall to the conclusion that apes are characterized by “rational behavior, i.e. the ability to plan, to foresee, the ability to identify intermediate goals and look for ways to achieve them, to isolate the essential aspects of a given problem.”
Quite a lot of facts of this kind have been collected; they are cited by different authors. However, the interpretation of random observations is not always so clear. The reason for many involuntary misconceptions is a lack of knowledge about the behavioral repertoire of a given species. And then a person, witnessing some surprisingly purposeful act of an animal, attributes it to the special intelligence of this individual. But in fact the reason may be different. After all, animals are so well adapted by nature to perform certain, at first glance, “smart” instinctive actions that they can be regarded as manifestations of intelligence. For example, the well-known Darwin's finches use "tools" - sticks and spines of cacti - to extract insects from under the bark. However, this is not the result of special intelligence of individual individuals, but a manifestation of the food-procuring instinct, which is mandatory for all representatives of the species.
Another example of a very common misconception that one often encounters is soaking dry food, which many birds resort to, in particular city crows. Having picked up a dry crust of bread, the bird goes to the nearest puddle, throws it there, waits until it gets a little wet, takes it out, pecks it, then throws it again, takes it out again. To a person seeing this for the first time, it seems that he has witnessed a unique ingenuity. Meanwhile, it has been established that many birds systematically use this technique, and do this from early childhood. For example, the crows that we raised in an aviary in isolation from adult birds tried to soak bread, meat, and inedible objects (toys) in water already at the beginning of the second month of life - as soon as they began to take food on their own. But when some city crows place dryers, which are too hard to get wet in a puddle, on tram rails - this, apparently, is truly someone’s individual invention.
There are many cases when the most common behavior characteristic of a species is mistaken for a manifestation of intelligence. Therefore, one of the commandments of a specialist in this field is to follow the so-called canon of C. Lloyd Morgan, which requires “... constantly monitoring whether some simpler mechanism, occupying a lower place on the psychological scale, does not underlie the supposedly intelligent action of an animal ", i.e. the manifestation of some instinct (as in Darwin's finches) or the results of learning (as in soaking crusts).
Such control can be carried out using experiments in the laboratory - as was the case in the above-mentioned works of B. Heinrich with crows or in the experiments of L.V. Krushinsky, which will be discussed below.
It also happens that some stories about the “intelligent” behavior of animals are simply a figment of someone’s imagination. For example, the English scientist D. Romens, a contemporary of Charles Darwin, wrote down someone’s observation that rats allegedly came up with a very special way of stealing eggs. According to him, one rat hugs the egg with its paws and turns over on its back, while the second drags it by the tail.
Over the past 100 years of intensive study of rats, both in nature and in the laboratory, no one has been able to observe anything similar. Most likely, it was just someone's invention, taken on faith. However, the author of this story could be quite sincerely mistaken. This assumption can be made by observing the behavior of rats in an enclosure where a hard-boiled egg is thrown at them. It turned out that all the animals (there were about 5-6 of them) were very excited. They alternately, pushing each other away, pounced on a new object, tried to “hug” it with their paws, and often fell on their side, grabbing the egg with all four limbs. In such a commotion, when a rat that has fallen with an egg in its paws is pushed by the others, it may well seem that one of them is dragging the other. Another question is why they liked the egg so much, which they had never seen in their lives, because these were gray pasyuki rats raised in the laboratory on compound feed...
What forms of animal behavior can really be considered intelligent? There is no simple and unambiguous answer to this question. After all, the human mind, the elements of which we are trying to discover in animals, has different manifestations - it’s not for nothing that they talk about “mathematical mind” or about musical or artistic talent. But even for an “ordinary” person who does not have special talents, the mind has very different manifestations. This includes solving new problems, planning your actions, and mentally comparing your knowledge and then using it for a variety of purposes.
Key Feature human thinking is the ability to generalize received information and store it in memory in an abstract form. Finally, his most unique feature is the ability to express his thoughts using symbols - words. All of these are very complex mental functions, but, oddly enough, it is gradually becoming clear that some of them are actually present in animals, albeit in a rudimentary, elementary form.
– successfully solves problems that are new to him, unexpectedly arising, the solution of which he could not learn in advance;
– acts not at random, not by trial and error, but according to a pre-drawn up plan, even the most primitive one;
– capable of generalizing the information he receives, as well as using symbols.
The source of modern understanding of the problem of animal thinking is numerous and reliable experimental evidence, and the very first and quite convincing of them were obtained back in the first third of the 20th century.
The largest domestic zoopsychologist N.N. Ladygina-Kots for the first time in the history of science in 1910–1913. studied the behavior of chimpanzees. She showed that the chimpanzee Joni, who was raised by her, was capable not only of learning, but also of generalizing and abstracting a number of features, as well as some other complex forms cognitive activity(Fig. 5). When Nadezhda Nikolaevna had her own son, she just as scrupulously followed his development and subsequently described the results of her comparison of the ontogenesis of the behavior and psyche of a chimpanzee and a child in the world-famous monograph “The Chimpanzee Child and the Human Child in Their Instincts, Emotions, Games, Habits and expressive movements" (1935).
The second experimental proof of the presence of the rudiments of thinking in animals is discovered by V. Köhler in the period 1914–1920. chimpanzees' ability to "insight", i.e. solving new problems through “reasonable comprehension of their internal nature, through understanding the connections between stimuli and events.” It was he who discovered that chimpanzees can solve problems that arise for the first time without preparation - for example, they take a stick to knock down a high-hanging banana or build a pyramid of several boxes for this purpose (Fig. 6). Regarding such decisions, Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, who repeated Köhler’s experiments in his laboratory, later said: “And when a monkey builds a tower to get a fruit, this cannot be called a conditioned reflex, this is a case of the formation of knowledge, the capture of the normal connection of things. These are the beginnings of concrete thinking, which we also use.”
Many scientists repeated V. Koehler’s experiments. In different laboratories, chimpanzees built pyramids from boxes and used sticks to obtain bait. They have had to solve even more difficult problems. For example, in the experiments of student I.P. Pavlova E.G. Watsuro the chimpanzee Raphael learned to extinguish the fire by filling the alcohol lamp with water, which blocked his access to the bait. He poured water from a special tank, and when it wasn’t there, he invented ways to get out of the situation - for example, he poured water from a bottle on the fire, and once he urinated in a mug. Another monkey (Carolina) in the same situation grabbed a rag and used it to put out the fire.
And then the experiments were transferred to the lake. The container with bait and the alcohol lamp were on one raft, and the water tank, from which Raphael was accustomed to taking water, was on the other. The rafts were located relatively far from each other and were connected by a narrow and shaky board. And this is where some of the authors decided that Raphael’s ingenuity had its limits: he made a lot of effort to bring water from a nearby raft, but did not simply try to scoop it up from the lake. Perhaps this was because chimpanzees are not very fond of bathing (Fig. 7).
Analysis of this and many other cases where monkeys, on their own initiative, used tools to reach a visible but inaccessible bait, made it possible to identify the most important parameter of their behavior - the presence of intentionality, the ability to plan their own actions and foresee their result. However, the results of the experiments described above are not always unambiguous, and different authors often interpreted them differently. All this dictated the need to create other tasks that would also require the use of tools, but the behavior of animals could be assessed on a “yes or no” basis.
This technique was proposed by the Italian researcher E. Visalbergi. In one of her experiments, bait was placed in a long transparent tube, in the middle of which there was a depression (“trap”). To get the bait, the monkey had to push out its pipes with a stick, and only from one end - otherwise the bait fell into the “trap” and became inaccessible (Fig. 8). Chimpanzees quickly learned to cope with this task, but with more poorly organized monkeys - capuchins - the situation was different. In general, they had to explain for a long time that in order to obtain bait, in which they were very interested, they needed to use a stick. But how to use it correctly remained a mystery to them. In Figure 8 you see a female named Roberta, who has already pushed one candy into the trap, but, nevertheless, sends the second one there, without predicting the result of her actions).
There is other evidence that the ability to plan actions, achieve intermediate goals and foresee their outcome distinguishes the behavior of anthropoid apes from the behavior of other primates, and observations of ethologists of anthropoids in nature fully confirm that such features are typical of their behavior.
No matter how interesting and important the experiments were where chimpanzees used tools in one way or another, their specificity was that they could not be carried out on any other animals - it is difficult to get dogs or dolphins to build a tower out of boxes or wield a stick. Meanwhile, both biology and evolutionary psychology are characterized by the tradition of using the comparative method, which dictates the need to assess the presence of one or another form of behavior in animals different types. A great contribution to the solution of this problem was made by the works of L.V. Krushinsky (1911–1984) - the largest Russian specialist in animal behavior, which he studied in a variety of aspects, including the genetics of behavior and observation of animals in their natural habitat.
In this photograph (Fig. 9) you see Leonid Viktorovich not in the ceremonial suit of a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, but at a happy moment for him, after returning from a hike through the forests and swamps of a remote region of the Novgorod region, where he spent the summer for many years.
The observations he made during his hikes compiled an entire book, “Riddles of Behavior, or In the Mysterious World of Those Around Us.” And some of them, as we will see later, served as the basis for experiments in the laboratory.
Works by L.V. Krushinsky marked a new stage in experimental studies of the rudiments of thinking in animals. He developed universal methods that made it possible to conduct experiments on animals of different species and objectively record and quantify their results. One example is a technique for studying the ability to extrapolate the direction of movement of a food stimulus that disappears from the field of view. Extrapolation is a clear mathematical concept. It means finding from a series of given values of a function its other values that are outside this series. The idea for this experiment was born while observing the behavior of a hunting dog. Chasing the black grouse, the dog did not rush through the bushes after him, but ran around them and met the bird right at the exit. Problems of this kind often arise in the natural life of animals.
To study the ability to extrapolate in the laboratory, they use the so-called screen experiment. In this experiment, an opaque barrier is placed in front of the animal, with a hole in the center. Behind the gap there are two feeders: one with food, the other empty. At the moment when the animal eats, the feeders begin to move apart and after a few seconds disappear behind transverse barriers (Fig. 10).
Fig. 10. Extrapolation test scheme (“screen experiment”)
To solve this problem, the animal must imagine the trajectories of movement of both feeders after they disappear from view, and, based on their comparison, determine which side to go around the obstacle in order to get food. The ability to solve such problems has been studied in representatives of all classes of vertebrates, and it turned out that it varies to a very significant extent.
It was found that neither fish (4 species) nor amphibians (3 species) solve this problem. However, all 5 species of reptiles studied were able to solve this problem - although the proportion of errors they made was quite high, and their results were significantly lower than those of other animals, statistical analysis showed that they still significantly more often walked around the screen in the right direction.
The ability to extrapolate has been most fully characterized in mammals; in total, about 15 species have been studied. Rodents solve the problem worst of all - only certain genetic groups of mice and wild pasyuki rats, as well as beavers, can cope with it. Moreover, the proportion of correct decisions at the first presentation in these species, as in turtles, only slightly (albeit statistically significantly) exceeded the random level. Representatives of more highly organized mammals - dogs, wolves, foxes and dolphins - cope with this task more successfully. The percentage of correct solutions is more than 80% and remains the same for various complications of the problem.
The data on birds was unexpected. As you know, the brain of birds is structured differently than that of mammals. They don't have neocortex, the activity of which is associated with the performance of the most complex functions, so for a long time there was a widespread opinion about the primitiveness of their mental abilities. However, it turns out that corvids solve this problem just as well as dogs and dolphins. In contrast, chickens and pigeons - birds with the most primitively organized brain - cannot cope with the extrapolation task, and birds of prey occupy an intermediate position on this scale.
Thus, a comparative approach allows us to answer the question of at what stages of phylogenesis the first, simplest rudiments of thinking arose. Apparently, this happened quite early - even among the ancestors of modern reptiles. Thus, we can say that the prehistory of human thinking goes back to quite ancient stages of phylogenesis.
The ability to extrapolate is only one of the possible manifestations of animal thinking. There are a number of other elementary logical problems, some of which were also developed and used by L.V. Krushinsky. They made it possible to characterize some other aspects of animal thinking, for example, the ability to compare the properties of volumetric and flat figures and on this basis, accurately find the bait the first time. It turned out, for example, that neither wolves nor dogs solve this problem, but monkeys, bears, dolphins, and corvids successfully cope with it.
Let us now move on to consider the other side of thinking - the ability of animals to perform operations of generalization and abstraction that underlie human thinking. Generalization is the mental unification of objects according to essential features common to all of them, and abstraction, inextricably linked with generalization, is an abstraction from secondary features, in this case not essential.
In an experiment, the presence of the ability to generalize is judged by the so-called “transfer test” - when the animal is shown stimuli that, to one degree or another, differ from those used during training. For example, if an animal has learned to select images of several figures that have bilateral symmetry, then in the transfer test it is also shown figures, some of which have this feature, but others. If a pigeon (it was on these birds that such experiments were carried out) chooses only symmetrical ones among new figures, it can be argued that it has generalized the “bilateral symmetry” feature.
After a characteristic has been generalized as a result of training, some animals can “transfer” not only to stimuli similar to those used during training, but also to stimuli of other categories. For example, birds that have generalized the trait “similarity in color”, without additional training, select not only stimuli of new colors that are similar to the sample, but also completely unfamiliar ones - for example, not colored, but differently shaded cards. In other words, they learn to mentally combine stimuli based on the “similarity” of a wide variety of features. This level of generalization is called proto-conceptual (or preverbal-conceptual), when information about the properties of stimuli is stored in the abstract, although not expressed in words, form.
Chimpanzees, as well as dolphins, corvids and parrots, have this ability. But more simply organized animals have difficulty coping with such tests. Even capuchins and macaques have to learn again, or at least complete their learning, to establish the similarity of features of other categories. Pigeons that have learned to select color stimuli based on similarity to a sample, when presented with stimuli of a different category, have to learn completely all over again and for a very long time. This is the so-called pre-conceptual level of generalization. It allows you to “mentally combine according to common features” only those new stimuli that belong to the same category as those used during training - color, shape, symmetry... It should be emphasized that the pre-conceptual level of generalization is characteristic of most animals.
Along with specific absolute characteristics - color, shape, etc. animals can also generalize relative features, i.e. those that are revealed only when comparing two or more objects - for example, more (less, equal), heavier (lighter), more to the right (to the left), similar (different), etc.
The ability of many animals to achieve high degrees of generalization has led to the question of whether they have the rudiments of the process of symbolization, i.e. whether they can associate an arbitrary sign that is neutral for them with ideas about objects, actions or concepts. And can they operate with such symbols instead of the objects and actions they denote?
Getting an answer to this question is very important because... It is the use of symbols-words that forms the basis of the most complex forms of the human psyche - speech and abstract logical thinking. Until recently, it was answered sharply negatively, considering that such functions are the prerogative of humans, and animals do not and cannot even have its rudiments. However, the work of American scientists in the last third of the twentieth century. forced to reconsider this point of view.
In several laboratories, chimpanzees were taught the so-called intermediary languages - a system of certain signs that denoted everyday objects, actions with them, some definitions and even abstract concepts - “hurt”, “funny”. The words were either gestures of the language of the deaf and dumb, or icons that marked the keys.
The results of these experiments exceeded all expectations. It turned out that monkeys actually learn the “words” of these artificial languages, and their vocabulary is very extensive: in the first experimental animals it contained hundreds of “words”, and in later experiments - 2-3 thousand! With their help, monkeys name everyday objects, the properties of these objects (colors, sizes, taste, etc.), as well as actions that they themselves and the people around them perform. They correctly use the right “words” in a variety of situations, including completely new ones. For example, when one day a dog chased the chimpanzee Washoe during a car ride, she did not hide, but, leaning out of the car window, began gesticulating: “Dog, go away.”
It is characteristic that the “words” of the intermediary language were associated in the monkey not only with a specific object or action, on the example of which training was carried out, but were used much more widely. Thus, having learned the “dog” gesture from the example of a mongrel who lived next to the laboratory, Washoe called all dogs of any breed this way (from St. Bernard to Chihuahua) both in life and in pictures. And even when she heard a dog barking in the distance, she made the same gesture. Similarly, having learned the “baby” gesture, she applied it to puppies, kittens, dolls, and any babies in life and in pictures.
These data indicate the high level of generalization that underlies the acquisition of such “languages.” Monkeys correctly solve transfer tests and use them to label a wide variety of new objects, belonging not only to the same category (different types of dogs, including their images), but also to stimuli of a different category, perceived not with the help of vision, but with the help of hearing (barking of an absent dog). As already mentioned, this level of generalization is considered as the ability to form preverbal concepts.
The monkeys, as a rule, willingly participated in the learning process. They mastered the first signs during intensive and targeted training with food reinforcement, but gradually moved on to work “for interest” - the approval of the experimenter. They often invented their own gestures to indicate objects that were important to them. Thus, the gorilla Koko, who loved young banana shoots, called them by combining two gestures - “tree” and “lettuce”, and Washoe, inviting them to his favorite game of hide and seek, closed her eyes several times with her palms and quickly took them away with a characteristic movement.
The flexibility of mastery of the lexicon is also manifested in the fact that to designate the same object, the name of which they did not know, the monkeys used different signs that described their different properties. Thus, one of the chimpanzees, Lucy, when she saw a cup, made gestures “drink”, “red”, “glass”, which clearly described this particular cup. Not knowing the right “words,” she called the banana “sweet green cucumber” and the radish “pain, cry, food.”
A more subtle understanding of the meaning of learned gestures was manifested in the ability of some monkeys to use them in a figurative sense. It turned out that many of them, who lived in different laboratories and, of course, never communicated with each other, had the word “dirty” as their favorite curse word. Some called “dirty” the hated leash that they always put on during a walk, dogs and monkeys that they don’t like, and finally, those employees who did not please them in some way. So, one day Washoe was put in a cage while she was cleaning the yard, where she usually moved freely. The monkey vigorously expressed its displeasure, and when they looked at it more closely, it turned out that it was also gesticulating: “Dirty Jack, give me a drink!” Gorilla Koko expressed himself even more radically. When she didn’t like the way she was being treated, she would gesture: “You’re a dirty, bad toilet.”
As it turned out, monkeys also have a peculiar sense of humor. So, one day Lucy, sitting on the shoulders of her teacher Roger Fouts, accidentally let a puddle fall down his collar and signaled: “Funny.”
The most important and completely reliable fact, established in the experiments of various scientists on chimpanzees and gorillas, is that anthropoids understand the meaning of word order in a sentence. For example, the teacher usually informed Lucy about the start of the game with gestures “Roger - tickle - Lucy”. However, the first time he gestured "Lucy - tickle - Roger", the monkey joyfully rushed to fulfill this invitation. In their own phrases, the anthropoids also followed the rules adopted in the English language.
The most compelling evidence that a chimpanzee’s mastery of an acquired “language” is indeed based on a high degree of generalization and abstraction, the ability to operate with acquired symbols in complete isolation from the designated objects, and the ability to understand the meaning of not only words, but also entire phrases, was obtained in the works of S. Savage-Rumbaugh. She raised me from the very beginning early age(6–10 months) of several cubs of pygmy chimpanzees (bonobos), who were constantly in the laboratory, observed everything that was happening and heard conversations taking place in front of them. When one of the students, Kenzi (Fig. 11), turned 2 years old, the experimenters discovered that he independently learned to use the keyboard and learned several dozen lexigrams. This happened during his contacts with his adoptive mother, Matata, who was taught the language, but to no avail. At the same age, it turned out that Kenzi understood many words, and by the age of 5, entire phrases that he had not been specifically taught and which he heard for the first time. After this, he, and then other bonobos raised in a similar way, began to be “examined” - day after day they performed a series of tasks according to instructions of various kinds that they had heard for the first time. Some of them concerned the most ordinary everyday actions: “put a bun in the microwave”; “get the juice out of the refrigerator”; “give the turtle some potatoes”; “go outside and find a carrot there.”
Other phrases involved performing little predictable actions with ordinary objects: “squeeze toothpaste onto a hamburger”; “find a (toy) dog and give it an injection”; “slap the gorilla with a can opener”; “let the (toy) snake bite Linda (the employee)”, etc.
The behavior of Kenzi and other bonobos completely coincided with the behavior of children aged 2.5 years. However, if later the speech of children continued to rapidly develop and become more complex, then the monkeys, although they improved, but only within the limits of the level already achieved.
These amazing results were obtained in several independently working laboratories, which indicates their special reliability. In addition, the ability of monkeys (as well as a number of other animals) to operate with symbols has been proven by various more traditional laboratory experiments. Finally, Moscow morphologists back in the 1960s. showed that there are cortical regions in the brains of monkeys cerebral hemispheres, which represent a prototype of the speech zones of the human brain.
Thus, numerous data convincingly prove that animals have the rudiments of thinking. In their most primitive form, they appear in a fairly wide range of vertebrates, starting with reptiles. As the level of brain organization increases, the number and complexity of tasks available to a given type grows. himself high level The thinking of apes reaches development. They are capable not only of planning their actions and predicting their results when solving new problems in a new situation - they are also characterized by a developed ability to generalize, assimilate symbols and master the simplest analogues of human language at the level of a 2.5-year-old child.
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Goodall J. In the shadow of a man. – M.: Mir, 1982
Zorina Z.A., Poletaeva I.I. Animal behavior. I'm exploring the world. – M.: Astrel, 2000.
Zorina Z.A., Poletaeva I.I. Animal psychology: elementary thinking of animals. – M.: AspectPress, 2001.
Koehler V. A study of the intelligence of great apes. – M.: Komakademiya, 1930.
Krushinsky L. V. Biological foundations of rational activity. – M.: Moscow State University Publishing House, 1986.
Ladygina-Kots N.N. The chimpanzee child and the human child in their instincts, emotions, games, habits and expressive movements. – M.: State Publishing House. Darwin Museum, 1935.
Linden Yu. Monkeys, humans and language. – M.: Mir, 1981.
This experiment can be seen in the BBC film Animal Minds, Part 1.
The video rental store has the film “Life Among the Apes” about the work of J. Goodall.
Rational activity of animals and biological prerequisites for human thinking.
According to A. R. Luria, “the act of thinking arises only when the subject has an appropriate motive that makes the task relevant and its solution necessary, and when the subject finds himself in a situation for which he does not have a ready-made solution - a habitual one (i.e. .i.e. acquired during the learning process) or innate.”
In other words, we are talking about acts of behavior, the execution program for which must be created urgently, in accordance with the conditions of the task, and does not require the selection of the “correct” actions by the “trial and error” method.
Criteria for the presence of the rudiments of thinking in animals There may be the following signs:
"emergency response" in the absence of a ready-made solution"(Luria, 1966);
“cognitive identification of objective conditions essential for action” (Rubinstein, 1958);
“generalized, indirect nature of the reflection of activity; finding and discovering something essentially new” (Brushlinsky, 1983);
“the presence and implementation of intermediate goals” (Leontiev, 1979).
the ability in new situations to solve unfamiliar problems for which there is no ready-made solution, that is, to urgently grasp the structure of the problem (“insight”)\;
the ability to generalize and abstract in the form of forming pre-verbal concepts and operating with symbols.
The basis of insight, according to V. Köhler, is the tendency to perceive the entire situation as a whole and, thanks to this, make an adequate decision, and not just automatically react with individual reactions to individual stimuli.
American psychologist N. Mayer showed that one of the varieties of animal thinking is the ability to react adequately in a new situation due to emergency reorganization of previously acquired skills, i.e. through the ability to "spontaneously integrate isolated elements of past experience, creating new, behavioral response that is appropriate to the situation”).
N. N. Ladygina-Kots wrote that “monkeys have elementary concrete imaginative thinking (intelligence) and are capable of elementary abstraction and generalization. And these traits bring their psyche closer to that of a human.”
Ability to urgently solve new problems. Ability to install "new communications in new situations" amounts to important property thinking of animals. L. V. Krushinsky studied this ability as the basis of elementary thinking in animals.
Thinking, or rational activity (according to Krushinsky), is “the ability of an animal to grasp empirical laws connecting objects and phenomena outside world, and operate with these laws in a new situation for him to build a program of adaptive behavioral act.”
At the same time, L.V. Krushinsky meant situations when an animal no ready-made program decisions formed as a result of learning or determined by instinct.
American explorer D. Rambo, analyzing the process of symbolization in anthropoids, emphasizes the cognitive nature of this phenomenon and considers the thinking of animals as “adequate behavior based on the perception of connections between objects, on the idea of absent objects, on the hidden manipulation of symbols.”
Another American researcher D. Primek also concludes that chimpanzees' "language" abilities (a complex form of communicative behavior) involve "higher-order mental processes."
The ability to generalize and abstract and form preverbal concepts. This is another most important manifestation of the rudiments of animal thinking. As Firsov points out, perhaps it is this form of the highest nervous activity constitutes the fundamental basis of other manifestations of thinking. L. A. Firsov gives the following definition of this ability:
“The ability to generalize and abstract is the ability of an animal, in the process of learning and gaining experience, to isolate and record relatively stable, invariant properties of objects and their relationships.”
The ability to foresee the results of one's own actions. A number of authors who have studied the rational elements in the holistic behavior of animals in natural or close to them conditions also especially note this type of higher nervous activity, as well as the ability to “actively operate with trace images and plan actions.”
Thus, a comprehensive knowledge of behavior in the natural habitat led the ethologist J. Goodall to the belief that chimpanzees have the rudiments of thinking, which manifest themselves in a variety of different forms and many situations. She uses the following definition of thinking:
“The ability to plan, foresee, the ability to identify intermediate goals and look for ways to achieve them, to isolate the essential aspects of a given problem - this, in a condensed form, is the essence of rational behavior.”
"Social consciousness". This is a special facet of the thinking process of animals , which manifests itself in the ability to take into account the behavior of relatives - the actions they perform and their consequences. Primack and Woodruff were the first to systematically study chimpanzees' ability to abstractly evaluate the mental states of other individuals and predict their intentions on this basis. Primek called this aspect of animal intelligence « theoryofmind», emphasizing above all its abstract character. This is the most complex and difficult to identify property of the mind of higher vertebrates.
Animal thinking provides (in one way or another) the ability to immediately adequately respond to a new situation for which there is no previously prepared solution.
The main directions of studying the elements of thinking in animals.
To experimentally study the rudiments of animal thinking, tests that are quite numerous and diverse in nature are used. Some of them, to one degree or another, recreate problematic situations that may arise in the natural environment. Their decision is based on the animal's ability to operate the so-called "empirical laws" those. natural physical laws inherent in the environment. Along with them, the experiments use tasks logical structure which are set arbitrarily and which have no analogues in the natural environment (for example, the Reves-Kruszynski test).
Research on the ability of animals to solve new problems in new, emergency situations, to escape from which they do not have a “ready-made solution” and which can be solved “by capturing connections and relationships between objects and phenomena”, by “actively mastering the laws of the environment” at the first presentation. In all cases, a logical solution to the problem is possible based on a mental analysis of its conditions, because by its nature it does not require preliminary “trial and error”. L.V. Krushinsky called them "elementary logical problems." They represent an alternative to situations where the desired result cannot be achieved other than by trial and error based on repetition, coincidence, reinforcement of stimuli and/or responses.
The ability of animals to solve problems by transferring previously developed responses to new stimuli (or sets of stimuli) and to new situations. IN This type of elementary thinking is based on the function generalizations those. ability in learning process identify features common to a number of stimuli, or identify patterns underlying the solution of a number of similar problems.
Some of the tests were, to one degree or another, borrowed from the arsenal of methods human psychology and modified for animal testing:
assessment of the ability to perform logical inference operations;
assessment of the ability to construct analogies.
Most elementary logical tests used to assess rational activity are based on problem situations associated with obtaining food. In some cases, the animal always sees the bait, which is separated from it by some barrier or distance, in others it disappears from sight in one way or another.
If an animal, without special training, without trial and error, at the first presentation “invents” a way to reach the bait, such a decision is considered as a manifestation of thinking.
When the bait disappears from sight, the animal should be guided in its decision not by its direct effect on the senses, but by its "mentally". This decision once again demonstrates the cognitive nature of these phenomena.
The study of animal thinking is based mainly on the analysis of such abilities as:
assessment of quantitative parameters of the environment, i.e. "check";
tool activity;
mastering intermediary languages
the ability to evaluate the performance of the test at the first presentation;
ensuring the “novelty” of stimuli upon repeated presentation of the task;
compliance of the experimental conditions with the sensory, manipulation and locomotor capabilities of animals of a given species;
assessment of the ecological and ethological characteristics of this species;
creating motivation in the animal that encourages it to solve the problem;
elimination of such signs that the animal could use when making a decision (olfactory, spatial and other “hint” stimuli);
preventing involuntary “hints” from the experimenter.
I. Capturing the principle behind the problem with the correct answer on the first trial
| 1. Reaching a bait that is in sight but out of reach: | 2. Search for bait that disappears from view: 1) extrapolation of the direction of movement of the food stimulus; | 3. Emergency detection of discrete changes in the position (movement) of the bait in a number of positions: Revesch-Kruszynski test |
| 1) overcoming an obstacle or choosing a workaround; |
||
| 2) reaching the bait using tools | 2) operating with spatial-geometric features |
II. Reorganization of previously learned independent skills
III. Identifying a General Algorithm
IV.Generalization and abstraction
U. Inference operations
VI. "Social consciousness" (Social Cognition)
AbilityToachievingbait, locatedVfieldvision.
Basket experience. The basket was hung under the roof of the enclosure and swung with a rope. It was impossible to get the banana lying in it except by climbing onto the rafters of the enclosure in a certain place and catching the swinging basket. The chimpanzees easily solved the problem, but this cannot be regarded with complete confidence as an urgent new reasonable solution, since it is possible that they could have encountered a similar problem before and had experience of behavior in a similar situation.
AchievementbaitWithwith helpguns
V. Köhler offered his monkeys several problems, the solution of which was possible only by using guns, those. foreign objects that expand the physical capabilities of the animal, in particular “compensating” for the insufficient length of the limbs.
Pulling the bait by the threads. In the first version of the problem, the bait lying behind the bars could be obtained by pulling it by the threads tied to it. This task, as it turned out later, was accessible not only to chimpanzees, but also to lower apes and some birds.
Use of sticks. Another version of the task is more common, when a banana, located behind a cage out of reach, could only be reached with a stick. Chimpanzees successfully solved And this task. If the stick was nearby, they took up it almost immediately, but if it was to the side, the decision required some time to think about. Along with sticks, chimpanzees could use other objects to achieve their goals.
V. Köhler discovered a variety of ways monkeys handle objects both under experimental conditions and in Everyday life. Monkeys, for example, could use a stick as a pole when jumping for a banana, as a lever for opening lids, like a shovel, in defense and attack; for cleaning wool from dirt; for fishing out termites from a termite mound, etc.
Tool activity of chimpanzees. W. Köhler's observations of the tool activity of chimpanzees gave rise to a special direction in the study of behavior. The fact is that the use of tools by animals seemed to be the most obvious demonstration of the presence of elements of thinking in them, as the ability in a new situation to make an adequate decision urgently, without preliminary trial and error. Subsequently, tool activity in different situations (not only in experiments) was discovered in other species of mammals: in monkeys of various species, in birds
L. A. Firsov. To test the ability of chimpanzees to use natural objects as tools, a special apparatus was developed. It was a transparent box, inside of which the bait was placed. To get it, you had to pull the traction handle, quite distant from the device. The problem was that as soon as the animal released the handle, the door of the apparatus slammed shut. At the same time, the pull was too long and both chimpanzee hands were not enough to hold the handle and simultaneously reach the bait. The young male Taras coped with this task. After unsuccessful attempts to solve the problem head-on, he walked away towards the nearest bushes. He broke out a long and strong stick and returned to the apparatus with it. Without making any unnecessary (searching or testing) movements, he forcefully pulled the thrust handle. He jammed the door that opened with the help of a stick he brought from the forest. Convinced of the achieved result, Taras quickly rushed to the apparatus, opened the door and took the bait.
It is characteristic that the search for the necessary tool was not blind trial and error: it seemed that the monkey was acting in accordance with a certain plan, having a good idea of what it needed.
When obtaining a visible but inaccessible bait, which was lowered to the bottom of a narrow and rather deep hole, chimpanzees also showed the ability to quickly select the most suitable tool, and this also did not happen as “random trials”, but as if as a result of comparison with the mental image of what they needed. guns.
The presence of elements of intelligence in higher animals is currently beyond doubt among any scientist. Intellectual behavior represents the pinnacle of animal mental development. At the same time, as noted by L.V. Krushinsky, it is not something out of the ordinary, but only one of the manifestations of complex forms of behavior with their innate and acquired aspects. Intellectual behavior is not only closely related to various forms of instinctive behavior and learning, but is itself made up of individually variable components of behavior. It provides the greatest adaptive effect and promotes the survival of individuals and procreation during sudden, rapid changes in the environment. At the same time, the intelligence of even the highest animals is undoubtedly at a lower stage of development than human intelligence, therefore it would be more correct to call it elementary thinking, or the rudiments of thinking. The biological study of this problem has come a long way; all the major scientists have invariably returned to it. The history of the study of elementary thinking in animals has already been discussed in the first sections of this manual, so in this chapter we will only try to systematize the results of its experimental study.
According to leading Russian psychologists, the following signs may be criteria for the presence of the rudiments of thinking in animals:
- - “the emergency appearance of an answer in the absence of a ready-made solution” (Luria);
- - “cognitive identification of objective conditions essential for action” (Rubinstein);
- - “generalized, indirect nature of the reflection of reality; finding and discovering something essentially new” (Brushlinsky);
- - “the presence and implementation of intermediate goals” (Leontyev).
Human thinking has a number of synonyms, such as: “mind”, “intelligence”, “reason”, etc. However, when using these terms to describe the thinking of animals, it is necessary to keep in mind that, no matter how complex their behavior is, we can only talk about the elements and rudiments of the corresponding mental functions of humans.
The most correct is the one proposed by L.V. Krushinsky's term rational activity. It allows us to avoid identifying the thought processes of animals and humans. The most characteristic property of the rational activity of animals is their ability to grasp the simplest empirical laws connecting objects and phenomena of the environment, and the ability to operate with these laws when constructing behavior programs in new situations.
Rational activity is different from any form of learning. This form of adaptive behavior can be carried out when the organism first encounters an unusual situation created in its habitat. The fact that an animal can immediately, without special training, decide to adequately perform a behavioral act is the unique feature of rational activity as an adaptive mechanism in diverse, constantly changing environmental conditions. Rational activity allows us to consider the adaptive functions of the body not only as self-regulating, but also self-selecting systems. This means the body’s ability to make an adequate choice of the most biologically appropriate forms of behavior in new situations. According to the definition of L.V. Krushinsky, rational activity is the performance by an animal of an adaptive behavioral act in an emergency situation. This unique way of adapting an organism to its environment is possible in animals with a well-developed nervous system.
The book shows which of the mentioned mental operations can be found in animals and what degree of complexity of these operations is inherent in them.
To select criteria for accurately determining those acts of animal behavior that can really be considered the rudiments of thinking, special attention, it seems to us, should be paid to the formulation of neuropsychologist A.
R. Luria (1966). His definition of the concept of “thinking” (in relation to humans) makes it possible to more accurately distinguish this process from other types of mental activity and provides reliable criteria for identifying the rudiments of thinking in animals.
According to A. R. Luria, “the act of thinking arises only when the subject has an appropriate motive that makes the task relevant and its solution necessary, and when the subject finds himself in a situation for which he does not have a ready-made solution - a habitual one (i.e. .i.e. acquired during the learning process) or innate.”
In other words, we are talking about acts of behavior, the implementation program for which must be created urgently, in accordance with the conditions of the task, and by its nature does not require the selection of the “correct” actions by the “trial and error” method.
The following signs may be criteria for the presence of the rudiments of thinking in animals:
* “the emergency appearance of an answer in the absence of a ready-made solution” (Luria, 1966);
* “cognitive identification of objective conditions essential for action” (Rubinstein, 1958);
* “generalized, indirect nature of the reflection of reality; finding and discovering something essentially new” (Brushlinsky, 1983);
* “the presence and implementation of intermediate goals” (Leontyev, 1979).
Research on the elements of thinking in animals is carried out in two main directions, making it possible to determine whether they have:
* the ability in new situations to solve unfamiliar problems for which there is no ready-made solution, that is, to urgently grasp the structure of the problem (“insight”) (see Chapter 4);
* the ability to generalize and abstract in the form of the formation of pre-verbal concepts and operating with symbols (see Chapters 5, 6).
At the same time, during all periods of studying this problem, researchers tried to answer two equally important and closely related questions:
1. What are the highest forms of thinking available to animals, and what degree of similarity to human thinking can they achieve? The answer to this question is related to the study of the psyche of great apes and their ability to master intermediary languages (Chapter 6).
2. At what stages of phylogenesis did the first, simplest rudiments of thinking appear and how widely are they represented in modern animals? To resolve this issue, extensive comparative studies of vertebrates at different levels of phylogenetic development are needed. In this book they are examined using the example of the works of L.V. Krushinsky (see Chapters 4, 8).
As we have already mentioned, until recently, problems of thinking were practically not the subject of separate consideration in textbooks on animal behavior, higher nervous activity, and zoopsychology.
If the authors touched upon this problem, they tried to convince readers of the weak development of their rational activity and the presence of a sharp (impassable) line between the psyche of humans and animals. K. E. Fabry, in particular, wrote in 1976:
“The intellectual abilities of monkeys, including anthropoids, are limited by the fact that all of them mental activity has a biological conditionality, therefore they are incapable of establishing a mental connection between ideas alone and their combination into images” (emphasis added - Author).
Meanwhile, over the past 15-20 years, a huge amount of new and diverse data has been accumulated, which makes it possible to more accurately assess the thinking capabilities of animals, the degree of development of elementary thinking in representatives of different species, and the degree of its closeness to human thinking.
To date, the following ideas about animal thinking have been formulated.
* The rudiments of thinking are present in a fairly wide range of vertebrate species - reptiles, birds, mammals of various orders. In the most highly developed mammals - apes - the ability to generalize allows them to acquire and use intermediary languages at the level of 2-year-old children (see Chapters 6, 7).
* Elements of thinking appear in animals in different forms. They can be expressed in the performance of many operations, such as generalization, abstraction, comparison, logical inference, emergency decision-making by operating with empirical laws, etc. (see Chapters 4, 5).
* Intelligent acts in animals are associated with the processing of multiple sensory information (sound, olfactory, various types of visual - spatial, quantitative, geo-
metric) in different functional spheres - food-procuring, defensive, social, parental, etc. Animal thinking is not just the ability to solve a particular problem. This is a systemic property of the brain, and the higher the phylogenetic level of the animal and the corresponding structural and functional organization of its brain, the greater the range of intellectual capabilities it has.
To designate the highest forms of human cognitive activity, there are terms - “mind”, “thinking”, “reason”, “reasonable behavior”. When using these same terms when describing the thinking of animals, it is necessary to remember that no matter how complex the manifestations of the higher forms of behavior and psyche of animals in the material discussed below, we can only talk about the elements and rudiments of the corresponding mental functions of humans. L. V. Krushinsky’s term “rational activity” allows us to avoid complete identification of thought processes in animals and humans, which differ significantly in degree of complexity.
1. What areas of biology study animal behavior?
2. On what principles are classifications of animal behavior based?
3. What questions do scientists who study animal thinking face?
4. What are the main directions in the study of animal thinking?
More on the topic Human thinking and the rational activity of animals:
- 4 ELEMENTARY THINKING, OR RATIONAL ACTIVITY, OF ANIMALS:
- 4.4. Classification of tests used to study the rational activity (thinking) of animals
- 8.2. Comparative characteristics of the level of elementary rational activity (elementary thinking) in animals of different taxonomic groups
- 2.11.3. The significance of the work of ETOAOGOV for assessing the rational activity of animals
- 2.7. The doctrine of higher nervous activity and the problem of animal thinking
- 9 GENETIC STUDIES OF ELEMENTARY RATIONAL ACTIVITIES AND OTHER COGNITIVE ABILITIES OF ANIMALS