For the past two decades, it has widely been assumed by linguists that there is a single computational operation, Merge, which is unique to language, distinguishing it from other cognitive domains. The intention of this paper is to progress the discussion of language evolution in two ways: (i) survey what the ethological record reveals about the uniqueness of the human computational system, and...

IN A SEMINAL PAPER WRITTEN FIVE DECADES AGO, CRONBACH DISCUSSED THE TWO HIGHLY DISTINCT APPROACHES TO SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGY: experimental and correlational. Today, although these two approaches are fruitfully implemented and embraced across some fields of psychology, this synergy is largely absent from other areas, such as in the study of learning and behavior. Both Tolman and Hull, in a rare c...

A. A. AMMAR,1* F. SEDERHOLM,1* T. R. SAITO,2* A. J. W. SCHEURINK,3 A. E. JOHNSON,1 AND P. SÖDERSTEN1 1Section of Applied Neuroendocrinology, Karolinska Institutet, Novum, S-141 57 Huddinge, Sweden; 2Division of Veterinary Ethology, Department of Laboratory Animal Sciences, Nippon Veterinary and Animal Science University, Musashino-shi, Tokyo 180, Japan; and 3Department of Animal Physiology, Uni...

The new field of “Computational Ethology” is made possible by advances in technology, mathematics, and engineering that allow scientists to automate the measurement and the analysis of animal behavior. We explore the opportunities and long-term directions of research in this area.

Previously we (Vonk and Shackelford, 2012, in press) proposed an integration of comparative psychology and evolutionary psychology into a new field of "comparative evolutionary psychology." This integrative discipline incorporates principles from ethology, ecology, biology, anthropology, and psychology, broadly defined. We present in this special issue a collection of original empirical and the...

Behaviour is usually assumed to depend on the reach of a critical intensity--termed reactivity threshold--by its motivation. This view represents a simple, predictive theoretical framework in ethology and animal psychology. However, it is here argued that only the influence of an isolated motivation on behaviour can be explained that way; that such a view fails to account for behaviour when sev...