What is the difference between thinking and reasoning. The difference between thinking human animals. Topics of term papers and essays

One of the vast "blank spots" of school textbooks is information about the behavior 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 these or other behavioral acts that ensure the survival of the species both in natural conditions and in the environment changed 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 of these is instincts , i.e. hereditarily programmed, practically identical in all individuals of this species, acts of behavior that reliably ensure existence in typical species conditions .

The second mechanism is learning ability , which helps to successfully adapt already to specific features of the environment faced by one or another individual . Habits, skills, conditioned reflexes are formed in each animal individually, depending on the real circumstances of his life.

For a long time it was believed that animal behavior is regulated only by these two mechanisms. However, the surprising expediency of behavior in many situations that are completely atypical for the species and that arise for the first time, sometimes quite 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 tasks 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 multiple repetitions. In contrast, the mind allows you to act correctly the first time, without prior preparation. This is the least studied side of animal behavior (it has long been - and partly remains - the subject of discussion) and will form the main topic of this article.

Scientists call the intelligence of animals in different ways: thinking, intellect, mind or rational activity. As a rule, the word “elementary” is also added, because no matter how “intelligent” animals behave, only a few elements of human thinking are available to them.

The most general definition of thinking presents it as mediated and generalized reflection of reality, giving knowledge about the most essential properties, connections and relations of the objective world. It is assumed that the basis of thinking is arbitrary operation of images. A.R. Luria specifies that the act of thinking arises in a situation for which there is no “ready-made” solution. Let us 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 "catch the simplest empirical laws that connect objects and phenomena of the environment, and the ability to operate with these laws when building 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 the usual conditions of existence. But occasionally such non-standard situations arise. And then the animal, if it really possesses 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 ingenuity of ravens 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 Fr. Bacon saw and described how the raven used this technique. Exactly the same story was told to us by our contemporary, who grew up in a remote village in Ukraine and did not read either Aristotle or Bacon. But as a child, he watched with surprise as a hand-grown jackdaw, grown by him, 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, getting into such a situation, different birds solve the problem in a similar way.

A similar solution is resorted to by corvids when they need to swim. In one of the American laboratories, rooks liked to splash around in the recess of the cement floor near the water drain hole. The researchers managed to observe that in hot weather one of the rooks, after washing the enclosure, plugged the hole with a cork before all the water had time to drain.

The raven is traditionally considered to be a particularly intelligent bird (although there is practically no experimental evidence that it differs in this respect from other corvids in some way). A number of examples of rational behavior of ravens in new situations are given by the American researcher B. Heinrich, who has been observing these birds in remote areas of Maine for many years. Heinrich proposed a quick-witted task to birds living in captivity in large aviaries. Two hungry crows were offered pieces of meat suspended from a branch on long cords, so that it was impossible to simply get them with their beak. Both adult birds coped with the task immediately, without making any preliminary tests - but each in its own way. One, sitting on a branch in one place, pulled up the rope with its beak and intercepted it, holding each new loop with its paw. The other, pulling the rope, pressed it with her paw, and she herself retreated to the branch for a certain distance and then pulled out the next portion. Interestingly, a similar way to get inaccessible bait in the 1970s. observed on water bodies near Moscow: gray crows pulled a fishing line from holes for ice fishing and thus got to the fish.

However, the most compelling evidence that animals have the beginnings of thinking comes from research on our closest relatives, the chimpanzees. Their ability to solve unexpected problems has been convincingly demonstrated in the works of L.A. Firsov. Young chimpanzees Lada and Neva, who were born and raised in the Institute's vivarium 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. Chimpanzees broke off a piece of table top from a table that had been in the enclosure for several years, then with the help of this stick they pulled the curtain towards them from a window far from the enclosure. After ripping off the curtain, they threw it like a lasso and finally hooked and pulled the keys towards them. Well, they knew how to open the lock with a key before. Subsequently, they willingly reproduced the whole chain of actions again, demonstrating that they acted not by chance, but in accordance with a certain plan.

J. Goodall, the famous English ethologist, who accustomed chimpanzees to her presence and studied their behavior in natural conditions for several decades (Fig. 2.), collected many facts that testify to the mind of these animals, their ability to urgently, “on the move » invent unexpected solutions to new problems. One of the most famous and impressive episodes is associated with the struggle of a young male Mike to achieve dominant status. After days of fruitless attempts to draw attention to himself with the usual demonstrations for a chimpanzee, he grabbed cans of kerosene 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. Once he hesitated for a long time to take a banana from Goodall's hands. Furious and agitated by his own indecision, he tore and tossed the grass. When he saw how one of the blades of grass accidentally touched a banana in the hands of a woman, the hysteria immediately gave way to efficiency - Mike broke off a thin branch and immediately threw it away, then 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 (as well as a number of other authors) describes the manifestations of another aspect of thinking discovered in laboratory experiments - the ability of a chimpanzee to plan (like Lada and Neva) multi-way combinations to achieve a set goal. She describes, for example, the various tricks (each time according to the situation) of the teenage male Figan, which he invented in order not to share prey with competitors. For example, he led them away from the 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 great 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 points 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 unambiguous. The reason for many involuntary misconceptions is the lack of knowledge about the behavioral repertoire of this species. And then a person, becoming a witness of some surprisingly expedient act of an animal, ascribes it to the special ingenuity of this individual. In fact, the reason may be something else. After all, animals are so well adapted by nature to perform some, at first glance, "intelligent" instinctive actions that they can be regarded as manifestations of the mind. For example, the well-known Darwin's finches use "tools" - sticks and cactus needles - to extract insects from under the bark. However, this is not the result of the special ingenuity 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 is often encountered is the soaking of dry food, which is resorted to by many birds, in particular city ravens. 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, then throws it again, takes it out again. To a person who sees this for the first time, it seems that he has witnessed a unique ingenuity. Meanwhile, it has been established that this technique is systematically used by very many birds, and they do it from early childhood. For example, crows, which 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 put dryers, which are too hard to get wet in a puddle, on tram rails, this, apparently, is really someone's individual invention.

There are many cases when the most common behavior characteristic of the species is taken as a manifestation of the mind. Therefore, one of the precepts of a specialist in this field is to follow the so-called canon of C. Lloyd Morgan, which requires “... to constantly monitor whether the supposedly intelligent action of an animal is based on some simpler mechanism that occupies a lower place on the psychological scale ”, i.e. the manifestation of some instinct (as in Darwin's finches) or learning outcomes (as in soaking crusts).

Such control can be carried out with the help of experiments in the laboratory - as it was 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 "reasonable" behavior of animals are just a figment of someone's imagination. For example, the English scientist D. Romens, a contemporary of Charles Darwin, recorded someone's observation that rats allegedly thought of a very special way to steal eggs. According to him, one rat hugs the egg with its paws and rolls over on its back, while the second drags it by the tail.

In the more than 100 years since then 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 fiction, taken on faith. However, the author of this story could be mistaken quite sincerely. This assumption can be arrived at by observing the behavior of rats in an enclosure where a hard-boiled egg is thrown to them. It turned out that all the animals (there were about 5-6 of them) became 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 hustle and bustle, 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 they were gray pasyuk rats grown in the laboratory on compound feed...

What forms of animal behavior can really be considered reasonable? 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 is not without reason that they speak of a "mathematical mind" or of musical or artistic talent. But even in an “ordinary” person who does not have special talents, the mind has very different manifestations. This is the solution of new problems, and the planning of their actions, and the mental comparison of their knowledge with their subsequent use for a variety of purposes.

The most important feature of human thinking is the ability to generalize the information received and store it in memory in an abstract form. Finally, his most unique feature is the ability to express his thoughts with the help of symbols - words. All these are very complex mental functions, but, oddly enough, it gradually becomes clear that some of them do exist in animals, albeit in a rudimentary, elementary form.

- successfully solves new for him, unexpectedly arising tasks, the solution of which he could not learn in advance;
- does not act at random, not by trial and error, but according to a pre-drawn plan, albeit the most primitive one;
– is capable of summarizing the information he receives, as well as the use of symbols.

The source of the 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 as early as 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 Ioni, 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 of cognitive activity (Fig. 5). When Nadezhda Nikolaevna had her own son, she followed his development just as scrupulously 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 the discovery by V.Kehler in the period 1914–1920. the ability of a chimpanzee to "insight", i.e. solving new problems due to "reasonable comprehension of their internal nature, due to understanding of the connections between stimuli and events". It was he who discovered that chimpanzees can, without preparation, solve problems that arise for the first time before them - for example, they take a stick to knock down a high-hanging banana or build a pyramid of several boxes for this (Fig. 6). Regarding such decisions, Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, who repeated Koehler’s experiments in his laboratory, later said: “And when a monkey builds a tower to get a fruit, you can’t call it a conditioned reflex, it is a case of the formation of knowledge, capturing the normal connection of things. These are the beginnings of concrete thinking, which we also use.

V.Kehler's experiments were repeated by many scientists. In various laboratories, chimpanzees built pyramids from boxes and used sticks to get bait. They were able to solve more difficult problems. For example, in the experiments of the student I.P. Pavlova E.G. Vatsuro chimpanzee Rafael learned to put out the fire - poured water over a spirit lamp, which blocked his access to the bait. He poured water from a special tank, and when it was not there, he invented ways to get out of the situation - for example, he filled the fire with water from a bottle, and once he urinated into a mug. Another monkey (Carolina) in the same situation grabbed a rag and put out the fire with it.

And then the experiments were transferred to the lake. The container with the bait and the spirit lamp were on the same raft, and the water tank, from which Rafael used to take water, was on the other. The rafts were located relatively far apart and connected by a narrow and rickety plank. And here some of the authors decided that Raphael's quick wit had its limits: he made a lot of efforts to bring water from a neighboring raft, but did not simply try to scoop it up from the lake. This may have been because chimpanzees are not too fond of bathing (Figure 7).

An analysis of this and many other cases, when monkeys, on their own initiative, used tools to achieve a visible but inaccessible bait, made it possible to identify the most important parameter of their behavior - the presence of premeditation, the ability to plan their own actions and foresee their results. 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 according to the “yes or no” principle.

This technique was proposed by the Italian researcher E. Vizalbergi. In one of her experiments, the 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 a “trap” and became inaccessible (Fig. 8). Chimpanzees quickly learned to cope with this task, but with more low-organized monkeys - capuchins - the situation was different. In general, they had to explain for a long time that in order to get the bait, in which they were very interested, you need to use a stick. But how to apply it correctly remains 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 candy there, without predicting the result of her actions).

There is other evidence that the ability to plan actions, achieve intermediate goals and anticipate their results distinguishes the behavior of anthropoid anthropoids from the behavior of other primates, and ethologists' observations of anthropoids in nature fully confirm that such features are typical of their behavior.

No matter how interesting and important the experiments 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 from 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 a particular form of behavior in animals of different species. A great contribution to the solution of this problem was made by the works of L.V. Krushinsky (1911–1984), the largest domestic specialist in animal behavior, which he studied in various 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 full dress of a Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, but at a happy moment for him, after returning from a trip through the forests and swamps of a remote region of the Novgorod region, where he spent many years summer.

The observations made by him during the campaigns made up a whole book "Mysteries 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 techniques that made it possible to conduct experiments on animals of different species and objectively record and quantify their results. One example is the 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, in a series of given values ​​of a function, its other values ​​that are outside this series. The idea for this experiment was born from observing the behavior of a hunting dog. Pursuing the black grouse, the dog did not follow him through the bushes, but ran around them and met the bird exactly at the exit. Problems of this kind often arise in the natural life of animals.

To study the ability to extrapolate in the laboratory, the so-called screen experiment is used. In this experiment, an opaque barrier is placed in front of the animal, in the center of which there is a hole. Behind the gap are two feeders: one with food, the other empty. At the moment when the animal is eating, the feeders begin to move apart and after a few seconds they hide 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 the field of view, and, based on their comparison, determine from which side the obstacle must be bypassed in order to receive 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 large extent.

It was found that neither fish (4 species) nor amphibians (3 species) solve it. However, all 5 studied species of reptiles were able to solve this problem - although the proportion of errors in them was quite high, and their results were significantly lower than in other animals, the statistical analysis showed that they nevertheless bypassed the screen in the right direction significantly more often.

The ability to extrapolate has been most fully characterized in mammals—about 15 species have been studied in total. 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 solutions at the first presentation in these species, as well as in turtles, only slightly (although statistically significant) exceeded the random level. Representatives of more highly organized mammals - dogs, wolves, foxes and dolphins - successfully cope with this task. The share of correct solutions for them is more than 80% and is retained with various complications of the problem.

The data on birds turned out to be unexpected. As you know, the brain of birds is arranged differently than that of mammals. They do not have a new cortex, the activity of which is associated with the performance of the most complex functions, so for a long time it was believed that their mental abilities were primitive. However, corvids have proven to be as good at this as dogs and dolphins. In contrast, chickens and pigeons, birds with the most primitively organized brains, do not cope with the task of extrapolation, and birds of prey occupy an intermediate position on this scale.

Thus, the comparative approach allows us to answer the question of at what stages of phylogenesis the first, most simple, 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 fairly 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 applied 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 three-dimensional and flat figures and, on this basis, unmistakably find bait from the very first time. It turned out, for example, that neither wolves nor dogs can solve such a problem, but monkeys, bears, dolphins, and corvids successfully cope with it.

Let us now turn to the consideration of the other side of thinking - the ability of animals to perform the operations of generalization and abstraction that underlie human thinking. Generalization is a mental association of objects according to the essential features common to all of them, and abstraction, inextricably linked with generalization, is a distraction from secondary features, in this case not essential.

In the experiment, the presence of the ability to generalize is judged by the so-called "transfer test" - when the animal is shown stimuli that differ to some extent from those used in training. For example, if an animal has learned to choose 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 already others. If the pigeon (it was on these birds that such experiments were carried out) will choose only symmetrical ones among the new figures, it can be argued that he has generalized the “bilateral symmetry” feature.

After some trait is generalized as a result of learning, some animals can "transfer" not only to stimuli similar to those used in training, but also to stimuli of other categories. For example, birds that have generalized the “color similarity” feature, without additional training, choose not only stimuli of new colors 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 according to the "similarity" of a wide variety of features. This level of generalization is called protoconceptual (or preverbal-conceptual), when information about the properties of stimuli is stored in an abstract, although not expressed in words, form.

This ability is possessed by chimpanzees, as well as dolphins, corvids and parrots. But more simply organized animals with similar tests cope with difficulty. Even capuchins and macaques, in order to establish the similarity of characters in other categories, again have to study, or at least finish their studies. Pigeons that have learned to choose color stimuli based on their similarity to the sample, when presented with stimuli of another category, have to learn completely anew and for a very long time. This so-called pre-conceptual generalization level. It allows you to "mentally combine by common features" only those new stimuli that belong to the same category as those used in training - color, shape, symmetry ... It should be emphasized that the pre-conceptual level of generalization is characteristic of most animals.

Along with specific absolute features - color, shape, etc. animals can also generalize relative signs, i.e. those that are revealed only when two or more objects are compared - for example, more (less, equal), heavier (lighter), to the right (to the left), similar (different), etc.

The ability of many animals to high degrees of generalization led to the question of whether they have the beginnings of a 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 whether they can 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 symbol-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 in the negative, believing that such functions are the prerogative of man, while animals do not and cannot even have its beginnings. 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 so-called intermediary languages ​​- a system of certain signs that denoted household items, actions with them, some definitions, and even abstract concepts - “it hurts”, “funny”. As words, they used either the gestures of the language of the deaf-mute, or the icons that marked the keys.

The results of these experiments exceeded all expectations. It turned out that monkeys really 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 the 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 during a car ride a dog chased the chimpanzee Washoe, she did not hide, but, leaning out of the car window, began to gesticulate: "Dog, go away."

It is characteristic that the “words” of the intermediary language in the monkey were associated not only with a specific object or action, on the example of which training was carried out, but were used much more widely. So, having learned the gesture “dog” using the example of a mongrel who lived near the laboratory, Washoe called all dogs of any breed (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. In the same way, having mastered the "child" gesture, she applied it to puppies, and to kittens, and to dolls, and to any cubs in life and in pictures.

These data testify to the high level of generalization that underlies the assimilation of such "languages". Monkeys solve transfer tests correctly and use them to designate very diverse new objects that belong not only to the same category (different types of dogs, including their images), but also to stimuli of another category, perceived not with the help of sight, but with the help of hearing. (barking absent dog). As already mentioned, this level of generalization is seen as the ability to form preverbal concepts.

Monkeys, as a rule, were willingly included in the learning process. They mastered the first signs in the course of intensive and directed 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 important to them. So, the gorilla Koko, who loved young banana shoots, called them by combining two gestures - “tree” and “salad”, and Washoe, inviting her to her favorite game of hide and seek, covered her eyes several times with a characteristic movement and quickly took them away.

The flexibility 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 describing their different properties. So, one of the chimpanzees - Lucy - at the sight of 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, the word “dirty” is their favorite curse word. Some called “dirty” the hated leash that they always put on during a walk, dogs and monkeys that they do not like, and finally, those employees who did not please them with something. So, once Washoe was put in a cage while cleaning in the yard, in which she usually moved freely. The monkey violently expressed his displeasure, and when they looked at her more closely, it turned out that she was also gesticulating: “Dirty Jack, let me drink!”. Gorilla Koko expressed himself even more radically. When she didn't like the way she was being treated, she would gesticulate, "You dirty bad toilet."

As it turned out, monkeys also have a peculiar sense of humor. So, once Lucy, sitting on the shoulders of her teacher Roger Footes, accidentally let a puddle down his collar and signaled: “Ridiculous.”

The most important and quite 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, usually the teacher informed Lucy about the beginning of the game with the gestures “Roger - tickle - Lucy”. However, the first time he gestured "Lucy - tickle - Roger", the monkey happily rushed to fulfill this invitation. In their own phrases, the anthropoids also followed the rules adopted in the English language.

The strongest evidence that the chimpanzee's mastery of the learned "language" is indeed based on a high degree of generalization and abstraction, the ability to operate with the learned symbols in complete isolation from the designated objects, the ability to understand the meaning of not only words, but also entire phrases, was obtained in the works of S. Savage Rambo. She raised from a very early age (6-10 months) several cubs of pygmy chimpanzees (bonobos), who were constantly in the laboratory, watched everything that happened and heard the conversations taking place with them. When one of the pupils, Kenzi (Fig. 11), turned 2 years old, the experimenters discovered that he independently learned how to use the keyboard and learned several dozen lexigrams. This happened in the course of 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 - whole phrases that he was not specially taught and which he heard for the first time. After that, he, and then other bonobos brought up in a similar way, began to be “examined” - day after day they performed a series of tasks according to the instructions they heard for the first time of various kinds. Some of them dealt with the most common everyday activities: “put a bun in the microwave”; "get the juice out of the fridge"; "give the turtle potatoes"; "go outside and find a carrot there."

Other phrases involved performing little predictable actions with ordinary objects: "squeeze toothpaste on a hamburger"; "find a (toy) dog and give it an injection"; "slap a gorilla with a can opener"; “let the (toy) snake bite Linda (employee)”, etc.

The behavioral features of Kenzi and other bonobos completely coincided with the behavior of children at the age of 2.5 years. However, if later the speech of children continued to develop rapidly and become more complex, then the monkeys, although they improved, but only within the already achieved level.

These amazing results were obtained in several independently operating 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 also been proven by various more traditional laboratory experiments. Finally, Moscow morphologists back in the 1960s. showed that in the brain of monkeys there are areas of the cerebral cortex, which are a prototype of the speech areas 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 organization of the brain increases, the number and complexity of tasks available for solving this species increases. The thinking of great apes reaches the highest level of development. They are capable not only of planning their actions and foreseeing 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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Zorina Z.A., Poletaeva I.I. Zoopsychology: elementary thinking of animals. – M.: AspectPress, 2001.

Keler W. A study of the intelligence of great apes. – M.: Komakademiya, 1930.

Krushinsky L. V. Biological bases of rational activity. - M.: Publishing house of Moscow State University, 1986.

Ladygina-Kots N.N. A child of a chimpanzee and a child of man in their instincts, emotions, games, habits and expressive movements. - M .: Publication of the State. Darwin Museum, 1935.

Linden Yu. Monkeys, man and language. – M.: Mir, 1981.

This experiment can be seen in the BBC film Animal Mind Part 1.

In the video rental there is a film "Life among the monkeys" about the work of J. Goodall.

Before talking about the elementary thinking of animals, it is necessary to clarify how psychologists define human thinking and intelligence. At present, in psychology, there are several definitions of these most 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 A.R. Luria, "the act of thinking occurs 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 regarding the way out of which he does not have a ready-made solution - familiar (i.e., acquired in the learning process ) or congenital".
It is quite obvious that this author has in mind acts of behavior, the program of which must be created urgently, in accordance with the conditions of the task, and by its nature does not require actions that are trial and error.
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 a narrow sense. In a broad sense intelligence- this is the totality of all cognitive functions of an individual, from sensation and perception to thinking and imagination, in a narrower sense, intelligence is actually thinking.

• In the process of human cognition of reality, psychologists note three main functions of the intellect:
  • ability to learn;
  • operating with symbols;
  • the ability to actively master the laws of the environment.
• Psychologists distinguish the following forms of human thinking:
  • visual-effective, based on the direct perception of objects in the course of actions with them;
  • figurative based on representations and images;
  • inductive, based on the logical conclusion "from the particular to the general" (construction of analogies);
  • deductive, based on the logical conclusion "from the general to the particular" or "from the particular to the particular", made in accordance with the rules of logic;
  • abstract-logical, or verbal, thinking, which is the most complex form.

8.2.1. Cognitive (cognitive) processes ()

Term "cognitive", or "cognitive", processes are used to refer to those types of behavior of animals and humans, which are based not on a conditioned reflex response to external stimuli, but on the formation of internal (mental) ideas about events and relationships between them.
I.S. Beritashvili calls them psycho-nervous images, or psycho-nervous notions, L.A. Firsov (; 1993) - figurative memory. D. McFarland (1982) emphasizes that animal cognitive activity refers to thought processes, which are often inaccessible to direct observation, but their existence can be revealed in the experiment.
Availability representations is found in those cases when the subject (human or animal) performs an action without the influence of any physically real stimulus. This is possible, for example, when he retrieves information from memory or mentally fills in the missing elements of the current stimulus. At the same time, the formation of mental representations may not be manifested in any way in the executive activity of the organism and will be revealed only later, at some definite moment.
Internal representations can reflect various types of sensory information, not only absolute, but also relative signs of stimuli, as well as relationships between different stimuli and between events of past experience. According to figurative expression, the animal creates a certain internal picture of the world, including a complex of representations "what where When". They underlie the processing of information about the temporal, numerical and spatial characteristics of the environment and are closely related to memory processes. There are also figurative and abstract (abstract) representations. The latter are considered as the basis for the formation of preverbal concepts.
Methods for studying cognitive processes.
The main methods for studying cognitive processes are as follows:
1. The use of differential conditioned reflexes to assess the cognitive abilities of animals.
To study cognitive processes in animals, various methods based on the development in animals of differential conditioned reflexes and their systems are widely used.
Such methods may differ in their main parameters. The order of presentation of stimuli can be sequential or simultaneous.
When presented sequentially the animal must learn to give a positive response to stimulus A and refrain from reacting when stimulus B is turned on. The development of differentiation, therefore, consists in inhibiting the reaction to the second stimulus. At simultaneous Presenting a particular pair of stimuli, the animal learns to distinguish between stimuli according to several absolute features. For example, when differentiating stimuli according to their configuration, the animal is simultaneously shown two figures - a circle and a square, and the choice of one of them, for example, a circle, is reinforced. This is the most common type of differential conditioned reflexes. The development and strengthening of such a reaction requires, as a rule, many dozens of combinations. The presentation of stimuli can be carried out in accordance with two modes: repetition of one pair of stimuli until the criterion is reached and alternation of several pairs of stimuli with systematic variation of secondary parameters.
By systematically varying the secondary parameters of stimuli, it is possible to assess the ability of animals to distinguish not only this particular pair of stimuli, but also their "generalized" signs that match many couples.
For example, animals can be trained to distinguish not specific circles and squares, but any circles and squares, regardless of their size, color, orientation, and so on. To this end, in the learning process, each next time they are offered a new pair of stimuli (new circle and square). The new pair differs from the rest in all secondary features of stimuli - color, shape, size, orientation, etc., but is similar in their main parameter - geometric shape, which is supposed to be distinguished. As a result of such training, the animal gradually generalizes the main feature and distracts from the secondary ones, in this case the circle.
Thus, it is possible to investigate not only the ability of animals to learn, but also ability to generalize, which is one of the most important properties of preverbal thinking in animals. One of the global issues that constantly confronts researchers is the search for differences in the ability to learn in different taxonomic groups as an assessment of the characteristics of their higher nervous activity.
As has been shown by many scientists, animals with different levels of structural and functional organization of the brain practically do not differ in the ability and speed of producing simple forms. Conditioned reflex - (temporary connection) 1) a reflex developed under certain conditions during the life of an animal or person; 2) the concept introduced by I.P. Pavlov - to denote a dynamic connection between a conditioned stimulus and an individual's response, originally based on an unconditioned stimulus. In the course of experimental studies, the rules for the development of conditioned reflexes were determined: the joint presentation of an initially indifferent and unconditioned stimulus with some delay in the second; in the absence of reinforcement of the conditioned stimulus by the unconditioned temporal connection is gradually inhibited; 3) an acquired reflex, in which functional connections between the excitation of receptors and the characteristic response of effector organs are established in the learning process. In Pavlov's classic experiments, dogs were trained to associate the sound of a bell with the time of feeding, so that in response to the ringing of the bell, they began to salivate whether they were given food or not; 4) a reflex formed when any initially indifferent stimulus approaches in time, followed by the action of a stimulus that causes an unconditioned reflex. The term Conditioned reflex was proposed by I.P. Pavlov. As a result of the formation of the Conditioned Reflex, an irritant that previously did not cause a corresponding reaction begins to cause it, becoming a signal (conditioned, i.e., detected under certain conditions) stimulus. There are two types of conditioned reflexes: classical, obtained by the specified method, and instrumental (operant) conditioned reflexes, during the development of which unconditional reinforcement is given only after the appearance of a certain motor reaction of the animal (see Operant conditioning). The mechanism of the formation of the Conditioned reflex was originally understood as breaking a path between two centers - a conditioned and an unconditioned reflex. At present, the concept of the mechanism of the Conditioned Reflex is accepted as a complex functional system with feedback, that is, organized according to the principle of a ring, and not an arc. The conditioned reflex of animals form a signal system in which the signal stimuli are agents of their habitat. In humans, along with the first signaling system generated by environmental influences, there is a second signaling system, where the word acts as a conditioned stimulus ("onmouseout="nd();" href="javascript:void(0);"> conditioned reflexes. It was not possible to detect similar differences in the formation of individual differentiation conditioned reflexes. However, thanks to their use as elementary units of learning and the creation of their various combinations, several experimental methods have been developed to assess the ability to "complex forms of learning", or serial learning(see video).
2. Formation "Installation- the state of the subject's predisposition to a certain activity in a certain situation. The phenomenon was discovered by the German psychologist L. Lange in 1888. The general psychological theory of set, based on numerous experimental studies, was developed by the Georgian psychologist D.N. Uznadze and his school. Along with the unconscious simplest attitudes, more complex social attitudes, value orientations of the individual, etc. ");" onmouseout="nd();" href="javascript:void(0);">learning settings". One of these methods is the method of forming "training settings". This test has found a very wide application for assessing both the individual abilities of the animal, and as a comparative method.
This method is as follows. First, the animal is taught simple differentiation - the choice of one of two stimuli, for example: to eat from one of the two nearby feeders - the one that is constantly on the left. After the animal has developed a strong conditioned reflex to the location of the food, they begin to put it in the feeder located on the right. When a new conditioned reflex is developed in the animal, food is again placed in the left feeder. Upon completion of the second stage of learning, the third differentiation is formed, then the fourth, etc. Usually, after a sufficiently large number of differentiations, the rate of their production begins to increase. In the end, the animal ceases to act by trial and error, and, having not found food at the first presentation in the next series, already at the second presentation, it acts adequately, in accordance with the previously learned rule, which is commonly called setting for training.
This rule is to "choose the same object as in the first trial, if its choice was accompanied by a reinforcement, or a different one if no reinforcement was received."
There are many modifications of this technique, in addition to the described "left - right" form, it is possible to develop differential conditioned reflexes to a variety of stimuli. In Harlow's classic experiments, rhesus monkeys were trained to differentiate between toys or small household items. Upon reaching a certain criterion for the development of differentiation, the next series was started: the animal was offered two new stimuli, in no way similar to the first ones.
For the first time, a broad comparative characteristic of the learning ability of animals from different systematic groups was obtained by the method of forming a learning attitude, which, to a certain extent, correlated with indicators of brain organization. At the same time, it is obvious that these results testified to the existence in animals of some processes that go beyond the simple formation of conditioned differentiation reflexes. Harlow believes that in the course of such a procedure, the animal "learns to learn." It is freed from the "stimulus-response" connection and moves from associative learning to insight-like learning from one sample.
L. A. Firsov believes that this type of learning, in its essence and in terms of the mechanisms underlying it, is close to the process of generalization, in which a general rule for solving many tasks of the same type is revealed.
3. Method of delayed reactions. This method is used to study presentation processes. It was proposed by W. Hunter in 1913 to assess the ability of an animal to respond for remembrance about a stimulus in the absence of this real stimulus and is named by it delayed reaction method.
In Hunter's experiments, an animal (in this case, a raccoon) was placed in a cage with three identical and symmetrically located exit doors. A light bulb was lit over one of them for a short time, and then the raccoon was given the opportunity to approach any of the doors. If he chose the door above which the light bulb was lit, he received reinforcements. With appropriate training, the animals chose the right door even after a 25-second delay - the interval between turning off the light and being able to make a choice.
Later, this problem was somewhat modified by other researchers. Before the eyes of an animal with a sufficiently high level of food excitability, food is placed in one of the two (or three) boxes. After the delay period, the animal is released from the cage or the barrier separating it is removed. His task is to choose a box of food.
A successful response to the delayed reaction test is considered proof that the animal has mental representation about a hidden object (its image), i.e. the existence of some kind of brain activity, which in this case replaces information from the senses. With the help of this method, a study of delayed responses in representatives of various animal species was carried out and it was demonstrated that their behavior can be guided not only by currently acting stimuli, but also by memory traces, images, or representations of missing stimuli.
In the classic delayed response test, different species perform differently. Dogs, for example, after the food is placed in one of the boxes, orient the body towards it and maintain this motionless posture during the entire delay period, and at the end of it immediately rush forward and select the desired box. Other animals in such cases do not maintain a certain posture and may even walk around the cage, which does not prevent them from nevertheless correctly detecting the bait. Chimpanzees develop not just an idea of ​​the expected reinforcement, but an expectation of a certain kind of it. So, if instead of the banana shown at the beginning of the experiment, after a delay, the monkeys found a salad (less favorite), they refused to take it and looked for a banana. Mental representations also control much more complex forms of behavior. Numerous evidence of this has been obtained both in special experiments and in observations of the daily behavior of monkeys in captivity and natural habitat.
One of the most popular directions in the analysis of cognitive processes in animals is analysis of learning "spatial" skills using the methods of water and radial labyrinths.
Spatial learning. Modern theory of "cognitive maps".
4. The method of learning in labyrinths. The labyrinth method is one of the oldest and most widely used methods for studying complex forms of animal behavior. Mazes can have different shapes and, depending on its complexity, can be used both in the study of conditioned reflex activity and in assessing the cognitive processes of animals. An experimental animal placed in a maze is tasked with finding a path to a specific goal, most often a food bait. In some cases, the goal may be shelter or other favorable conditions. Sometimes when an animal deviates from the right path, it receives punishment.
In its simplest form, the labyrinth looks like a T-shaped corridor or tube. In this case, when turning in one direction, the animal receives a reward; when turning in the other direction, it is left without a reward or even punished. More complex labyrinths are made up of various combinations of T-shaped or similar elements and dead ends, entry into which is regarded as animal errors. The results of the passage of the maze by the animal are determined, as a rule, by the speed of achieving the goal and by the number of mistakes made.
The labyrinth method makes it possible to study both issues directly related to the ability of animals to learn, and issues of spatial orientation, in particular, the role of musculoskeletal and other forms of sensitivity, memory, the ability to transfer motor skills to new conditions, to form sensory sensations, etc. d. (see video)
To study the cognitive abilities of animals, most often used .
Education in the radial maze. The technique for studying the ability of animals to learn in the radial maze was proposed by the American researcher D. Olton.
Usually a radial labyrinth consists of a central chamber and 8 (or 12) rays, open or closed (called in this case compartments, or corridors). In experiments on rats, the length of the labyrinth rays varies from 100 to 140 cm. For experiments on mice, the rays are made shorter. Before the start of the experiment, food is placed at the end of each corridor. After the accustoming procedure to the environment of the experiment, the hungry animal is placed in the central compartment, and it begins to enter the rays in search of food. When re-entering the same compartment, the animal no longer receives food, and such a choice is classified by the experimenter as erroneous.
In the course of the experiment, the rats form a mental representation of the spatial structure of the labyrinth. Animals remember which compartments they have already visited, and in the course of repeated training, the "mental map" of this environment is gradually improved. Already after 7-10 training sessions, the rat unmistakably (or almost unmistakably) enters only those compartments where there is reinforcement, and refrains from visiting those compartments where it has just been.

• The radial labyrinth method allows you to evaluate:
  • spatial memory formation animals;
  • the ratio of such categories of spatial memory as working and reference.

Working memory is usually called the preservation of information within one experience.
Reference memory stores information essential for mastering the labyrinth as a whole.
The division of memory into short term and long term is based on another criterion - on the duration of the preservation of traces over time.
Work with the radial maze made it possible to identify in animals (mainly rats) the presence of certain cmpamey search food.

• In the most general form, such strategies are divided into allo- and egocentric:
  • at allocentric strategy when looking for food, the animal relies on its mental representation of the spatial structure of the given environment;
  • egocentric strategy is based on the animal's knowledge of specific landmarks and comparison of the position of its body with them.

Such a division is largely conditional, and the animal, especially in the process of learning, can use elements of both strategies in parallel. Evidence for the use of an allocentric strategy (mental map) by rats is based on numerous control experiments, during which either new landmarks (or, conversely, clues) are introduced, or the orientation of the entire maze relative to previously fixed coordinates, etc. is changed.
Training in the Morris water maze (water test). In the early 80s. Scottish researcher R. Morris suggested using a "water maze" to study the ability of animals to form spatial representations. The method gained great popularity, and it became known as the "Morris water maze".
The principle of the method is as follows. The animal (usually a mouse or rat) is released into a pool of water. There is no way out of the pool, but there is an invisible (cloudy) underwater platform that can serve as a refuge: having found it, the animal can get out of the water. In the next experiment, after some time the animal is released to swim from another point of the pool perimeter. Gradually, the time that passes from the launch of the animal to finding the platform is shortened, and the path is simplified. This testifies on the formation of his idea of ​​the spatial location of the platform on the basis of external reference points in relation to the basin. Such a mental map can be more or less accurate, and to determine the extent to which the animal remembers the position of the platform, you can move it to a new position. In this case, the time the animal will spend swimming over the old platform location will be memory trace strength indicator.
The creation of special technical means for automating the experiment with a water maze and software for analyzing the results made it possible to use such data for accurate quantitative comparisons of the behavior of animals in the test.
"Mental plan" of the labyrinth . One of the first hypotheses about the role of representations in the learning of animals was put forward by E. Tolman in the 1930s. 20th century (1997). Investigating the behavior of rats in labyrinths of various designs, he came to the conclusion that the "stimulus-response" scheme generally accepted at that time cannot satisfactorily describe the behavior of an animal that has learned orientation in such a complex environment as a labyrinth. Tolman suggested that in the period between the action of the stimulus and the response, a certain chain of processes takes place in the brain ("internal or intermediate variables") that determine subsequent behavior. These processes themselves, according to Tolman, can be studied strictly objectively in terms of their functional manifestation in behavior.
In the process of learning, a Cognitive Map is formed in an animal - (from Latin cognitio - knowledge, cognition) - an image of a familiar spatial environment. A cognitive map is created and modified as a result of the active interaction of the subject with the outside world. In this case, Cognitive maps of various degrees of generality can be formed, " onmouseout="nd();" href="javascript:void(0);"> "cognitive map" all signs of a labyrinth, or "mental plan". Then, on the basis of this "plan" the animal builds its behavior.
The formation of a "mental plan" can also take place in the absence of reinforcement, in the process of orienting-research activity. Tolman called this phenomenon Latent learning is the formation of certain skills in a situation where their direct implementation is not necessary and they turn out to be unclaimed.");" onmouseout="nd();" href="javascript:void(0);"> latent learning .
Similar views on the organization of behavior were held by I.S. Beritashvili (1974). He owns the term - "behavior directed by the image". Beritashvili demonstrated the ability of dogs to form ideas about the structure of space, as well as "psycho-nervous images" of objects. Pupils and followers of I.S. Beritashvili showed ways of modifying and improving figurative memory in the process of evolution, as well as in ontogenesis, based on data on the spatial orientation of animals.
The ability of animals to orient themselves in space. There are a number of approaches to the study of the formation of spatial representations in an animal. Some of them are related to the assessment of the orientation of animals in natural conditions. To study spatial orientation in a laboratory setting, two methods are most often used - radial and water labyrinths. The role of spatial representations and spatial memory in the formation of behavior is mainly studied in rodents, as well as some species of birds.
An experimental study, mainly with the help of labyrinth methods, of the ability of animals to navigate in space, showed that when finding a way to a goal, animals can use different methods, which, by analogy with laying sea routes, these methods are called:

• dead reckoning;
• using landmarks;
• map navigation.

The animal can simultaneously use all three methods in different combinations, i.e. they are not mutually exclusive. At the same time, these methods differ fundamentally in the nature of the information on which the animal relies when choosing this or that behavior, as well as in the nature of those internal "representations" that it forms in this case.

• Let's take a closer look at orientation.
  • dead reckoning- the most primitive way of orientation in space; it is not related to external information. The animal tracks its movement, and the integral information about the path traveled, apparently, is provided by the correlation of this path and the elapsed time. This method is inaccurate, and precisely because of this, it is practically impossible to observe it in an isolated form in highly organized animals.
  • Using Landmarks often combined with "reckoning". This type of orientation is to a large extent close to the formation of "stimulus-response" connections. The peculiarity of "work according to landmarks" is that the animal uses them strictly alternately, "one at a time". The path that an animal remembers is a chain of associative links.
  • When orienting in the area("navigation on the map") the animal uses the objects and signs it encounters as reference points for determining the further path, including them in the integral picture of ideas about the area.

Numerous observations of animals in their natural habitat show that they are perfectly oriented in the area using the same methods. Each animal keeps in its memory a mental plan of its habitat.
Thus, experiments on mice showed that the rodents that lived in a large enclosure, which was a piece of forest, knew perfectly well the location of all possible shelters, sources of food, water, etc. An owl released into this enclosure turned out to be able to catch only individual young animals. At the same time, when mice and owls were released into the enclosure at the same time, owls caught almost all the rodents during the first night. The mice, which did not have time to form a cognitive plan of the area, were not able to find the necessary shelters.
Mental maps are also of great importance in the life of highly organized animals. Thus, according to J. Goodall (1992), the "map" stored in the memory of chimpanzees allows them to easily find food resources scattered over an area of ​​24 square meters. km within the Gombe nature reserve, and hundreds of square meters. km in populations living in other parts of Africa.
The spatial memory of monkeys stores not only the location of large food sources, such as large groups of abundantly fruiting trees, but also the location of individual such trees and even solitary termite mounds. For at least a few weeks, they remember where certain important events took place, such as conflicts between communities. Long-term observations of brown bears in the Tver region by V. S. Pazhetnov (1991) made it possible to objectively characterize the role played by the mental plan of the area in the organization of their behavior. Following the tracks of an animal, a naturalist can reproduce the details of his hunt for large prey, the movement of a bear in the spring after leaving the den, and in other situations. It turned out that bears often use such techniques as "cutting the path" when hunting alone, bypassing the victim for many hundreds of meters, etc. This is possible only if an adult bear has clear mental map area of ​​their habitat.
Latent learning. By W. Thorp's definition, latent learning- is "... the formation of a connection between indifferent stimuli or situations in the absence of explicit reinforcement".
Elements of latent learning are present in almost any learning process, but can only be revealed in special experiments.
Under natural conditions, latent learning is possible due to the exploratory activity of the animal in a new situation. It is found not only in vertebrates. This or a similar ability for orientation on the ground is used, for example, by many insects. So, a bee or a wasp, before flying away from the nest, makes a "reconnaissance" flight over it, which allows it to fix in memory the "mental plan" of a given area.
The presence of such "latent knowledge" is expressed in the fact that the animal, which was previously allowed to get acquainted with the situation of the experiment, learns faster than the control animal, which did not have such an opportunity.
Teaching "selection by example"."Choice by pattern" is one of the types of cognitive activity, also based on the formation of an animal's internal ideas about the environment. However, unlike learning in labyrinths, this experimental approach is associated with the processing of information not about spatial features, but about the relationship between stimuli - the presence of similarities or differences between them.
The "selection by pattern" method was introduced at the beginning of the 20th century. N.N. Ladygina-Kots and has since been widely used in psychology and physiology. It consists of showing the animal a pattern stimulus and two or more stimuli to match with it, reinforcing the choice of the one that matches the pattern.

• There are several options for "select by sample":
  • choice of two incentives - alternative;
  • choice of several stimuli - multiple;
  • delayed choice- the selection of a "pair" to the presented stimulus is performed by the animal in the absence of a sample, focusing not on a real stimulus, but on its mental image, on performance about him.

When an animal chooses the right stimulus, it receives reinforcement. After the response has been strengthened, the stimuli begin to vary, testing how firmly the animal has learned the rules of choice. It should be emphasized that we are not talking about a simple development of a connection between a certain stimulus and a response, but about the process of forming regulations choice based on representation of the ratio of the sample and one of the stimuli.
Successful solution of the task with a delayed choice also makes us consider this test as a way to assess the cognitive functions of the brain and use it to study the properties and mechanisms of memory.

• There are basically two varieties of this method:
  • selection on the basis of similarity with the sample;
  • selection on the basis of difference from the sample.

Special mention should be made of the so-called symbolic, or iconic, pattern selection. In this case, the animal is trained to select stimulus A when presented with stimulus X and stimulus B when presented with Y as a sample. At the same time, stimuli A and X, B and Y should have nothing in common with each other. In teaching according to this method, at first, purely associative processes play a significant role - learning the "if...then..." rule.
Initially, the experiment was set up as follows: the experimenter showed the monkey an object - a sample, and she had to choose the same one from two or more other objects offered to her. Then, direct contact with the animal, when the experimenter held a sample stimulus in his hands and took the chosen stimulus from the hands of the monkey, was replaced by modern experimental setups, including automated ones, which completely separated the animal and the experimenter. In recent years, computers with a touch-sensitive monitor have been used for this purpose, and the correctly selected stimulus automatically moves across the screen and stops next to the sample.
It is sometimes erroneously considered that learning to "choose according to the model" is the same as the development of differentiating SDs. However, this is not the case: during differentiation, only the formation of a reaction to the stimuli present at the moment of learning occurs.
In "choosing according to a pattern," the main role is played by a mental representation of a pattern that is absent at the time of selection and, on its basis, the identification of the relationship between the pattern and one of the stimuli. The method of learning to choose from a model, along with the development of differentiations, is used to identify the ability of animals to generalize.

8.2.2. The study of the ability to reach the bait, located in the field of view of the animal. Use of guns

With the help of problems of this type, a direct experimental study of the rudiments of animal thinking began. They were first used by W. Koehler (1930). In his experiments, problem situations were created that were new for animals, and their structure allowed solve problems urgently, based on an analysis of the situation, without preliminary trial and error. W. Koehler offered his monkeys several tasks, the solution of which was possible only with the use of tools, i.e. foreign objects that expand the physical capabilities of the animal, in particular, "compensate" for the insufficient length of the limbs.
The tasks used by W. Koehler can be arranged in order of increasing complexity and different likelihood of using previous experience. Let's consider the most important of them.

8.2.2.1. The shopping cart experience

This is a relatively simple task, for which, apparently, there are analogues in natural conditions. The basket was hung under the roof of the enclosures and swung with a rope. It was impossible to get the banana lying in it otherwise than by climbing onto the rafters of the enclosures in a certain place and catching the swinging basket. Chimpanzees easily solved the problem, but this cannot be regarded with full confidence as an urgently emerging new intelligent solution, since it is possible that they could have faced a similar problem before and had experience of behavior in a similar situation.
The tasks described in the following sections represent the best-known and most successful attempts to create problem situations for an animal, in order to get out of which it has no ready solution, but which can decide without prior trial and error.

8.2.2.2. Pulling the bait by the threads

In the first variant of the problem, the bait lying behind the bars could be obtained by pulling it up by the threads tied to it. This task, as it turned out later, was available not only to chimpanzees, but also to lower apes and some birds. A more complex version of this problem was proposed by the chimpanzee in experiments D.3. Roginsky (1948), when the bait had to be pulled by both ends of the ribbon at the same time. The chimpanzees in his experiments did not cope with such a task (see video).

8.2.2.3. Use of sticks

Another variant of the problem is more common, when a banana located behind a cage out of reach could only be reached with a stick. Chimpanzees successfully solved this problem as well. If the stick was nearby, they took it almost immediately, if aside, the decision required some time to think. Along with sticks, chimpanzees could use other objects to achieve their goal.
W. Köhler discovered a variety of ways monkeys deal with objects both in experimental conditions and in everyday life. Monkeys, for example, could use a stick as a pole when jumping for a banana, as a lever to open lids, as a shovel in defense and attack; for cleaning wool from dirt; for fishing termites out of a termite mound, etc. (see video)

8.2.2.4. Chimpanzee tool activity

8.2.2.5. Removing the bait from the pipe (experiment of R. Yerkes)

This technique exists in different versions. In the simplest case, as was the case in the experiments of R. Yerkes, the bait was hidden in a large iron pipe or in a narrow long box through. Poles were offered to the animal as tools, with the help of which it was necessary to push the bait out of the pipe. It turned out that not only chimpanzees, but also the Gorilla, the great ape, successfully solve such a problem. Growth of males up to 2 m, weight up to 250 kg and more; females are almost half the size. The build is massive, the muscles are highly developed. The volume of the brain is 500-600 cm?. They live in the dense forests of Equatorial Africa. Herbivorous, peaceful animals. The number is small and declining, mainly due to deforestation. In the IUCN Red List. It breeds in captivity.");" onmouseout="nd();" href="javascript:void(0);">gorilla and Orangutan - 1) one of the largest, great apes of Africa and the Indian Islands; 2) a large anthropoid ape with long arms and coarse red hair, living in trees. ");" onmouseout="nd();" href="javascript:void(0);">orangutan.
The use of sticks by monkeys as tools is considered by scientists not as a result of random manipulations, but as a conscious and purposeful act.

8.2.2.6. Constructive activity of monkeys

When analyzing the ability of chimpanzees to use tools, V. Koehler noticed that in addition to using ready-made sticks, they made tools: for example, breaking off an iron rod from a shoe rack, bending bundles of straw, straightening wire, connecting short sticks if the banana was too far away, or shortening the stick if it was too long.
Interest in this problem, which arose in the 20-30s, prompted N.N. Ladygin-Kots to a special study of the question of the extent to which primates are capable of using, modifying and manufacturing tools. She conducted an extensive series of experiments with the chimpanzee Paris, who was offered dozens of different items to obtain inaccessible food. The main task that was offered to the monkey was to extract the bait from the pipe.
The methodology of experiments with Paris was somewhat different than that of R. Yerkes: they used an opaque tube 20 cm long. The bait was wrapped in cloth, and this bundle was placed in the central part of the tube, so that it was clearly visible, but it could only be taken with some device. It turned out that Paris, like the anthropoids in the experiments of Yerkes, was able to solve the problem and used any suitable tools for this (a spoon, a narrow flat board, a torch, a narrow strip of thick cardboard, a pestle, a toy wire ladder and other, a wide variety of objects). Given the choice, he clearly preferred longer objects or massive, heavy sticks.
Along with this, it turned out that the chimpanzee has a fairly wide range of possibilities for using not only ready-made "tools", but also items that require constructive activity, - various kinds of manipulations to "finish" blanks to a state suitable for solving the problem.
The results of more than 650 experiments have shown that the range of instrumental and constructive activities of chimpanzees is very wide. Paris, like the monkeys in the experiments of V. Koehler, successfully used objects of various shapes and sizes and performed all kinds of manipulations with them: he bent, gnawed off extra branches, untied bundles, untwisted coils of wire, took out extra parts that prevented the tool from being inserted into the tube . Ladygina-Kots refers the tool activity of chimpanzees to manifestations of thinking, although she emphasizes its specificity and limitations compared to human thinking.
The question of how “meaningful” the actions of chimpanzees (and other animals) when using tools has always caused and continues to cause great doubt. So, there are many observations that along with the use of sticks for their intended purpose, chimpanzees make a number of random and meaningless movements. This is especially true for constructive actions: if in some cases chimpanzees successfully lengthen short sticks, then in others they connect them at an angle, obtaining completely useless structures. Experiments in which animals have to "guess" how to get the bait out of the tube testify to the chimpanzee's ability to make tools and use them purposefully according to the situation. There are qualitative differences in such abilities between lower apes and great apes. Great apes (chimpanzees) are capable of " Insight - (from English insight - insight, insight, understanding) 1) sudden understanding, " .="" onmouseout="nd();" href="javascript:void(0);">insight"- the conscious "planned" use of tools in accordance with their mental plan (see video).

8.2.2.7. Reaching the bait with the help of the construction of "pyramids" ("towers")

The most famous was the group of experiments by V. Koehler with the construction of "pyramids" to reach the bait. A banana was hung from the ceiling of the enclosures, and one or more boxes were placed in the enclosure. To get the bait, the monkey had to move the box under the banana and climb on it. These tasks differed significantly from the previous ones in that they obviously had no analogues in the species repertoire of the behavior of these animals.
Chimpanzees were able to solve this kind of problems. In most of the experiments of V. Koehler and his followers, they carried out the actions necessary to achieve the bait: they substituted a box or even a pyramid of them under the bait. Characteristically, before making a decision, the monkey, as a rule, looks at the fetus and begins to move the box, demonstrating that it detects the presence of a connection between them, although it cannot immediately realize it.
The actions of the monkeys were not always unambiguously adequate. So, the Sultan tried to use people or other monkeys as a weapon, climbing onto their shoulders or, conversely, trying to raise them above him. His example was eagerly followed by other chimpanzees, so that the colony at times formed a "living pyramid". Sometimes a chimpanzee would put a box against a wall or build a "pyramid" away from the suspended bait, but at a level necessary to reach it.
An analysis of the behavior of chimpanzees in these and similar situations clearly shows that they produce evaluation of the spatial components of the problem.
At the next stages, W. Koehler complicated the task and combined its various options. For example, if a box was filled with rocks, the chimpanzees unloaded some of them until the box became "liftable."
In another experiment, several boxes were placed in an aviary, each too small to reach a treat. The behavior of the monkeys in this case was very diverse. For example, Sultan pushed the first box under the banana, and with the second he ran around the enclosure for a long time, taking out his rage on it. Then he suddenly stopped, put the second box on top of the first one, and plucked a banana. The next time the Sultan built a pyramid not under the banana, but where it hung last time. For several days he built the pyramids casually, and then suddenly began to do it quickly and accurately. Often the structures were unstable, but this was compensated by the dexterity of the monkeys. In some cases, several monkeys built the pyramid together, although they interfered with each other.
Finally, the "limit of difficulty" in the experiments of V. Koehler was a task in which a stick was hung high under the ceiling, several boxes were placed in the corner of the enclosures, and a banana was placed behind the bars of the enclosures. Sultan first began to drag the box around the enclosure, then looked around. Seeing the stick, after 30 seconds he put a box under it, took it out and pulled the banana towards him. The monkeys completed the task both when the boxes were weighted with stones and when various other combinations of task conditions were used.
It is noteworthy that the monkeys constantly tried to apply different methods of solution. So, V. Koehler mentions the case when the Sultan, taking him by the hand, led him to the wall, quickly climbed onto his shoulders, and pushing off from the top of his head, grabbed a banana. Even more indicative is the episode when he put the box against the wall, while looking at the bait and, as it were, estimating the distance to it.
Chimpanzee success in building pyramids and towers also indicates that they have a "mental" plan of action and the ability to implement such a plan (see video).

8.2.2.8. The use of tools in experiments with "extinguishing the fire"

8.2.2.9. Intellectual behavior of chimpanzees outside of experiments

Concluding the description of this group of methods for studying the thinking of animals, it should be noted that the results obtained with their help have convincingly proved the ability of great apes to solve such problems.
Chimpanzees are capable of intelligent problem solving in new situations without prior experience. This decision is made not by gradually "groping" for the correct result by trial and error, but by Insight - (from English insight - insight, insight, understanding) 1) sudden understanding, " .="" onmouseout="nd();" href="javascript:void(0);"> insight - penetration into the essence of the problem due to the analysis and evaluation of its conditions. Evidence for this view can also be gleaned simply from observations of the behavior of chimpanzees. A convincing example of the ability of a chimpanzee to "work according to a plan" was described by L. A. Firsov, when a bunch of keys was accidentally forgotten in a laboratory not far from the enclosure. Despite the fact that his young experimental monkeys Lada and Neva could not reach them with their hands, they somehow got them and found themselves free. It was not difficult to analyze this case, because the monkeys themselves readily reproduced their actions when they repeated the situation, leaving the keys in the same place already consciously.
It turned out that in this completely new situation for them (when there was obviously no "ready-made" solution), the monkeys invented and performed a complex chain of actions. First, they tore off the edge of the tabletop from the table that had been standing in the aviary for a long time, which no one had touched until now. Then, with the help of the resulting stick, they pulled the curtain towards them from the window, which was quite far outside the cage, and seized it. Having taken possession of the curtain, they began to throw it on the table with keys, located at some distance from the cage, and with its help they pulled the bundle closer to the bars. When the keys were in the hands of one of the monkeys, she opened the lock that hung on the enclosure outside. They had seen this operation many times before, and it was not difficult for them, so all that remained was to go free.
Unlike the behavior of the animal placed in Thorndike's "problem box", in the behavior of Lada and Neva everything was subordinated to a certain plan and there was practically no blind "trial and error" or previously learned suitable skills. They broke the table just at the moment when they needed to get the keys, when for all the past years it had not been touched. The monkey curtain was also used in different ways. At first they threw it like a lasso, and when it covered the bundle, they pulled it up very carefully so that it would not slip out. The unlocking of the lock itself was repeatedly observed by them, so it was not difficult.
To achieve this goal, the monkeys made a number of "preparatory" actions. They ingeniously used various objects as tools, clearly planned their actions and predicted their results. Finally, in solving this unexpectedly arising task, they acted extremely harmoniously, understanding each other perfectly. All this allows us to regard actions as an example reasonable behavior in a new situation and attributed to the manifestations of thinking in the behavior of chimpanzees. Commenting on this case, Firsov wrote: "One must be too prejudiced against the psychic possibilities Anthropoid is a great ape.");" onmouseout="nd();" href="javascript:void(0);">anthropoids in order to see only a simple coincidence in everything described. Common to the behavior of monkeys in this and similar cases is the absence of a simple enumeration of options. These acts of a precisely unfolding behavioral chain probably reflect implementation of a decision already made, which can be carried out on the basis of both current activities and the life experience of the monkeys" (; italics ours. - Auth.).

8.2.2.10. Gun actions of anthropoids in their natural habitat

It is also not often possible to "catch" such cases among monkeys living in freedom, but over the years many such observations have accumulated. We give only a few examples.
Goodall (1992), for example, describes one of them, involving the fact that scientists fed bananas to animals visiting their camp. Many liked it very much, and they stayed nearby, waiting for the next serving of treats to be available (). One of the adult males, named Mike, was afraid to take a banana from the hands of a person. One day, torn apart by a struggle between fear and the desire for a treat, he became very agitated. At some point, he even began to threaten Goodall, shaking a bunch of grass, and noticed how one of the blades of grass touched a banana. At the same moment, he released the bunch from his hands and plucked a plant with a long stem. The stalk was quite thin, so Mike immediately dropped it and plucked another, much thicker one. With this stick, he knocked the banana out of Goodall's hands, picked it up and ate it. When she took out the second banana, the monkey immediately used her tool again.
Male Mike has repeatedly shown remarkable ingenuity. Having reached puberty, he began to fight for the title of dominant and won it thanks to a very peculiar use of tools: he frightened his rivals with the roar of gasoline canisters. No one but him thought of using them, although the canisters lay around in abundance. Subsequently, one of the young males tried to imitate him. Other examples of using objects to solve new problems are also noted.
For example, some males used sticks to open a container of bananas. It turned out that in various areas of their life, monkeys resort to complex actions, including drawing up a plan and foreseeing their result.
Systematic observations in nature make it possible to make sure that reasonable actions in new situations are not an accident, but a manifestation of a general strategy of behavior. In general, such observations confirm that the manifestations of anthropoid thinking in experiments and during life in captivity objectively reflect the real characteristics of their behavior.
Initially, it was assumed that any use of a foreign object to expand the animal's own manipulative abilities could be regarded as a manifestation of the mind. Meanwhile, along with the considered examples of individual invention of methods for using tools in emergency, sudden situations, it is known that some populations of chimpanzees regularly use tools in standard situations of everyday life. So, many of them "fish out" termites with twigs and blades of grass, and palm nuts are carried to solid grounds ("anvils") and broken with stones ("hammers"). Cases are described when monkeys, seeing a suitable stone, picked it up and dragged it with them until they reached fruit-bearing palm trees.
In the last two examples, the chimpanzee's tool activity is of a completely different nature from Mike's. The use of twigs for "fishing" termites and stones for breaking nuts, which are their usual food, monkeys gradually learn from childhood imitating elders.
An analysis of the tool activity of anthropoids convincingly proves that anthropoids have the ability to purposefully use tools in accordance with a certain "mental plan". All the experiments described above, conducted by V. Koehler, R. Yerks, N. Ladygina-Kots, G. Roginsky, A. Firsov and others, also assumed the use of certain tools. Thus, the tool activity of primates can be considered convincing evidence of the manifestation of rational activity.

8.3.1. The concept of "empirical laws" and an elementary logical task

L.V. Krushinsky introduced the concept elementary logic problem, i.e. task, which is characterized by a logical connection between its constituent elements. Due to this, it can be solved urgently, at the first presentation, due to a mental analysis of its conditions. Such tasks, by their nature, do not require preliminary trials with inevitable errors. Like tasks that require the use of tools, they can serve alternative and Thorndike's "problem box", and the development of various systems of differential conditioned reflexes.
As pointed out by L.V. Krushinsky, in order to solve elementary logical problems, animals need to possess some empirical laws:
1. The law of "non-disappearance" of objects. Animals are able to retain the memory of an object that has become inaccessible to direct perception. Animals that "know" this empirical law more or less persistently search for food that has been hidden from their field of vision in one way or another. So, crows and parrots are actively looking for food, which was covered before their eyes with an opaque glass or fenced off from them with an opaque barrier. Unlike these birds, pigeons and chickens do not operate with the law of "non-disappearance" or operate to a very limited extent. This is expressed in the fact that in most cases they hardly try to look for food after they stop seeing it.
The idea of ​​the "non-disappearance" of objects is necessary for solving all types of problems related to the search for bait that has disappeared from view.
2. Law related to traffic, is one of the most universal phenomena of the surrounding world that any animal encounters, regardless of lifestyle. Each of them, without exception, from the very first days of life observes the movements of parents and sibs, predators that threaten them, or, conversely, their own victims. At the same time, animals perceive changes in the position of trees, grass, and surrounding objects during their own movements. This creates the basis for the formation of the idea that the movement of an object always has a certain direction and trajectory. Knowledge of this law underlies the solution of the extrapolation problem.
3. The laws of "containment" and "movability". Animals that own these laws, based on the perception and analysis of the spatial-geometric features of the surrounding objects, "understand" that some voluminous objects can contain other voluminous objects and move with them.
In the laboratory of L.V. Krushinsky, two groups of tests were developed, with the help of which it is possible to assess the ability of animals of different species to operate with the indicated empirical laws.
As Krushinsky believed, the laws he listed do not exhaust everything that can be available to animals. He assumed that they also operate with ideas about the temporal and quantitative parameters of the environment, and planned the creation of appropriate tests.
Suggested by L.V. Krushinsky (1986) and the methods of comparative study of rational activity described below with the help of elementary logical tasks are based on the assumption that animals catch these "laws" and can use them in a new situation.

8.3.2. A technique for studying the ability of animals to extrapolate the direction of movement of a food stimulus that disappears from the field of view

Under extrapolation understand the ability of an animal to carry a function known on a segment beyond its limits. Extrapolation of the direction of movement of animals in natural conditions can be observed quite often. One of the typical examples is described by the famous American zoologist and writer E. Seton-Thompson in the story "Silver Spot". One day, a male crow, Silver Spot, dropped a crust of bread he had caught into a stream. She was picked up by the current and carried away into a brick chimney. First, the bird peered deep into the pipe for a long time, where the crust disappeared, and then confidently flew to its opposite end and waited until the crust floated out from there. L.V. repeatedly encountered similar situations in nature. Krushinsky. So, the idea of ​​the possibility of experimental reproduction of the situation was brought to him by observation of the behavior of his hunting dog. While hunting in the field, the pointer found a young black grouse and began to pursue him. The bird quickly disappeared into the thick bushes. The dog, on the other hand, ran around the bushes and stood up in a “stance” exactly opposite the place from which the black grouse, moving in a straight line, jumped out. The behavior of the dog in this situation turned out to be the most appropriate - the pursuit of the black grouse in the thicket of bushes was completely pointless. Instead, catching the direction of the bird's movement, the dog intercepted it where it least expected. Krushinsky commented on the behavior of the dog in the following way: "it was a case that quite fit the definition of a reasonable act of behavior."
Observations of the behavior of animals in natural conditions led L.V. Krushinsky to the conclusion that the ability to extrapolate the direction of movement of the stimulus can be considered as one of the rather elementary manifestations of the rational activity of animals. This makes it possible to approach an objective study of this form of behavior.
To study the ability of animals of different species to extrapolate the direction of movement of the food stimulus, L.V. Krushinsky suggested several elementary logic tasks.
The most widely used so-called "experiment with a screen." In this experiment, the animal receives food through a slit in the middle of an opaque screen from one of two nearby feeders. Shortly after it starts to eat, the feeders move symmetrically in different directions, and, having passed a short distance in front of the animal, they hide behind opaque valves, so that the animal no longer sees their further movement and can only imagine it mentally.
Simultaneous extension of both feeders does not allow the animal to choose the direction of movement of the feed, guided by the sound, but at the same time gives the animal the possibility of an alternative choice. When working with mammals, a feeder with the same amount of food, covered with a net, is placed at the opposite edge of the screen. This allows you to "equalize the smells" coming from the bait on both sides of the screen, and thereby prevent the search for food with the help of smell. The width of the opening in the screen is adjusted in such a way that the animal can freely insert its head into it, but does not crawl through completely. The size of the screen and the chamber in which it is located depend on the size of the experimental animals.
To solve the problem of extrapolating the direction of movement, the animal must imagine the trajectories of movement of both feeders after disappearing from the field of view and, based on their comparison, determine from which side it is necessary to bypass the screen in order to receive food. The ability to solve this problem is manifested in many vertebrates, but its severity varies significantly in different species.
The main characteristic of the ability of animals to rational activity are the results of the first presentation tasks, because when they are repeated, the influence on animals and some other factors is connected. In this regard, in order to assess the ability to solve a logical problem in animals of this species, it is necessary and sufficient to conduct one experiment on a large group. If the proportion of individuals who correctly solved the problem at its first presentation significantly exceeds the random level, it is considered that animals of a given species or genetic group have the ability to extrapolate (or to another type of rational activity).
As studies by L.V. Krushinsky, animals of many species (predatory mammals, dolphins, corvids, turtles, pasyuki rats were able to solve the problem of extrapolating the movement of a food stimulus. At the same time, animals of other species (fish, amphibians, chickens, pigeons, most rodents) bypassed screen is purely random.In repeated experiments, the behavior of an animal depends not only on the ability, or inability to extrapolate the direction of movement, but also on whether it remembers the results of previous decisions.In view of this, the data of repeated experiments reflect the interaction of a number of factors, and to characterize the ability of animals given groups for extrapolation, they must be taken into account with certain reservations.
Multiple presentations make it possible to more accurately analyze the behavior in the experiment of animals of those species that poorly solve the extrapolation problem at its first presentation (as can be judged by the low proportion of correct solutions, which does not differ from the random 50% level). It turns out that most of these individuals behave in a purely random manner and when the task is repeated. With a very large number of presentations (up to 150), animals such as, for example, chickens or laboratory rats, gradually learn to go around the screen more often from the side into which the food has disappeared. On the contrary, at extrapolating well species, the results of repeated applications of the task may be somewhat lower than the results of the first, for example, in foxes and dogs. The reason for this decrease in test scores may be, apparently, the influence of various behavioral tendencies that are not directly related to the ability to extrapolate as such. These include a tendency to spontaneous alternation of runs, a preference for one of the sides of the set, which is characteristic of many animals, and so on. In the experiments of Krushinsky and his collaborators, in some animals, for example, corvids and some predatory mammals, after the first successful solutions to the problems presented to them, errors and refusals of solutions began to appear. In some animals, the overstrain of the nervous system when solving difficult problems led to the development of peculiar neuroses (Phobias - (from the Greek phуbos - fear) 1) overwhelming obsessive fear; a psychopathic state characterized by such unmotivated fear; 2) obsessive inadequate experiences of fears of a specific content, covering the subject in a certain (phobic) environment and accompanied by autonomic dysfunctions (palpitations, profuse sweat, etc.). Phobias are found within neuroses, psychoses and organic diseases of the brain. With neurotic phobias, patients, as a rule, are aware of the groundlessness of their fears, treat them as painful and subjectively painful experiences, to-rye they are unable to control. If the patient does not reveal a clear critical understanding of the groundlessness, unreasonableness of his fears, then more often these are not Phobias, but pathological doubts (fears), delirium. Phobias have certain behavioral manifestations, the purpose of which is to avoid the subject of the Phobia or reduce fear through obsessive, ritualized actions. Neurotic Phobias, in " onmouseout="nd();" href="javascript:void(0);"> phobias), expressed in the development of fear of the environment of the experience. After a certain period of rest, the animals began to work normally. This suggests that rational activity requires a great tension of the central nervous system.
With the help of the test for extrapolation of the direction of movement, which allows us to give an accurate quantitative assessment of the results of its solution, for the first time a broad comparative characteristic of the development of the rudiments of thinking in vertebrates of all major taxonomic groups was given, their morphophysiological foundations, some aspects of formation in the process of ontogenesis and phylogenesis, i.e., were studied. e. almost the entire range of questions, the answer to which, according to N. Tinbergen, is necessary for a comprehensive description of behavior (see video).

8.3.3. Methods for studying the ability of animals to operate with spatial and geometric features of objects

For normal orientation in space and an adequate way out of various life situations, animals sometimes need an accurate analysis of spatial characteristics. As shown, a certain "mental plan" or "cognitive map" is formed in the brain of animals, in accordance with which they build their behavior. The ability to build "spatial maps" is currently the subject of intensive study.
As Zorina and Poletaeva (2001) point out, elements of spatial thinking of monkeys were also found in the experiments of V. Koehler. He noted that in many cases, when planning the path to reach the bait, the monkeys first compared how they "estimated" the distance to it and the height of the boxes proposed for "construction". Understanding the spatial relationships between objects and their parts is a necessary element of more complex forms of chimpanzee tool and constructive activity (;).
Such volumetric and geometric qualities of objects as shape, dimension, symmetry, etc. also refer to spatial features. Formulated by L.V. Krushinsky empirical laws "accommodation" and "transportation" are based precisely on the analysis of the assimilation by animals of the spatial properties of objects. Thanks to the possession of these laws, animals are able to understand that three-dimensional objects can contain each other and move while being one in the other. This circumstance allowed L.V. Krushinsky to create a test to assess one of the forms of spatial thinking - the ability of an animal in the process of searching for bait to compare objects of different dimensions: three-dimensional (volumetric) and two-dimensional (flat).
It has been called a test for "operating with the empirical dimension of figures", or a test for "dimension".

• To successfully solve this problem, animals must know the following empirical laws and perform the following operations:
  • mentally imagine that the bait, which has become inaccessible to direct perception, does not disappear (the law of "non-disappearance"), or it can be placed in another three-dimensional object and move with it in space (the law of "containment" and "displacement"), evaluate the spatial characteristics of figures;
  • using way the disappeared bait as a standard, mentally compare these characteristics with each other and decide where the bait is hidden;
  • drop the volumetric figure and master the bait.

Initially, the experiments were carried out on dogs, but the experimental technique was complicated and unsuitable for comparative studies. Somewhat later, B.A. Dashevsky (1972) designed a device that can be used to study this ability in any vertebrate species, including humans. This experimental setup is a table, in the middle part of which there is a device for moving apart rotating demonstration platforms with figures. The animal is on one side of the table, the figures are separated from it by a transparent partition with a vertical slit in the middle. On the other side of the table is the experimenter. In part of the experiments, the animals did not see the experimenter: he was hidden from them behind a glass partition with one-sided visibility.
The experiment is set up as follows. A bait is offered to a hungry animal, which is then hidden behind an opaque screen. Under its cover, the bait is placed in a three-dimensional figure (OP), for example, a cube, and a flat figure (PF), in this case a square (a projection of a cube onto a plane), is placed next to it. Then the screen is removed, and both figures, rotating around their own axis, move apart in opposite directions with the help of a special device. To get the bait, the animal must go around the screen from the right side and overturn the three-dimensional figure.
The experimental procedure made it possible to repeatedly present the task to the same animal, while ensuring the maximum possible novelty of each presentation. To do this, the experimental animal in each experiment was offered a new pair of figures that differed from the rest in color, shape, size, method of construction (flat-faced and bodies of revolution) and size. The results of the experiments showed that monkeys, dolphins, bears and approximately 60% of corvids are able to successfully solve this problem. Both during the first presentation of the test, and during repeated tests, they choose a predominantly three-dimensional figure. Unlike them, predatory mammals of the canine family and some corvids react to figures purely by chance and only after dozens of combinations gradually are trained the right choices.
As already mentioned, the proposed mechanism for solving such tests is a mental comparison of the spatial characteristics of the figures present at the time of selection and the bait absent at the time of selection, which serves as a standard for their comparison. Corvids, dolphins, bears and monkeys are capable of solving elementary logical problems based on operating with spatial and geometric features of objects, while for many other animals that successfully cope with the task of extrapolating the direction of movement, this test turns out to be too difficult. Thus, the test for operating with the empirical dimension of figures turns out to be less universal than the test for extrapolation of the direction of movement (see video).

8.3.4. The results of a comparative study of the rational activity of animals of different taxonomic groups, obtained using the methods described above

Thus, numerous studies carried out in the laboratory of L.V. Krushinsky, showed that with the help of the above methods it was possible to assess the level of rational activity of vertebrates of different taxonomic groups.
Mammals. Representatives of this taxonomic group showed a wide range of variability in the level of rational activity. A thorough comparative analysis showed that, according to the ability to solve the proposed problems, the studied mammals can be divided into the following groups, which differ significantly from each other.
1. The group includes animals with the highest level of development of rational activity, such as non-human apes, dolphins and brown bears. These animals successfully coped with the test "the ability to operate with the empirical dimension of figures".
2. This group is characterized by fairly well-developed rational activity. It includes wild members of the canine family such as red foxes, wolves, dogs, corsacs and raccoon dogs. They successfully cope with all the tasks of extrapolating the direction of movement, but the test for "the ability to operate with the empirical dimension of figures" turns out to be too difficult for them.
3. Representatives of this group are characterized by a somewhat lower level of development of rational activity than animals of the previous group. These include silver foxes and arctic foxes, which belong to populations bred for many generations on fur farms.
4. Cats should be placed in this group, which, undoubtedly, can be evaluated as animals with developed rational activity. However, they solve tasks for the ability to extrapolate somewhat worse than carnivorous mammals from the canine family.
5. The group covers the studied species of murine rodents and lagomorphs. In general, representatives of this group can be characterized as animals with a much lesser degree of manifestation of rational activity than carnivores. The highest level was noted in Rat-pasyuk - (pasyuk - barn rat), a mammal of the genus of rats. Body length up to 20 cm, tail slightly shorter than the body. Distributed widely. Lives in human buildings. Causes massive damage to food. The carrier of the causative agent of plague and other infectious diseases. ");" onmouseout="nd();" href="javascript:void(0);">pasyukov rats, which is quite correlated with the highest plasticity of the behavior of this species.
Birds. Despite the fact that the number of L.V. Krushinsky, there were significantly fewer bird species than mammalian species, among them a wide variability in the level of their rational activity was also found. Among the studied bird species, it was possible to distinguish three groups of species that significantly differed in their ability to solve the tasks proposed to them.
1. Representatives of the crow family can be attributed to this group. In terms of the level of rational activity, the birds of this family are high. They are comparable to carnivorous mammals from the canine family.
2. The group is represented by diurnal birds of prey, domestic ducks and chickens. On the whole, these birds did not solve the extrapolation problem well at its first presentation, however, they learned to solve it after repeated presentations. In terms of the level of their rational activity, these birds approximately correspond to rats and rabbits.
3. This group is made up of pigeons, which have difficulty learning to solve the simplest tests. The level of development of the mental activity of these birds is comparable to the level of laboratory mice and rats.
Reptiles. Turtles, both aquatic and terrestrial, as well as green lizards, solved the proposed extrapolation problems with approximately the same success. In terms of extrapolation, they are lower than the crows, but higher than most of the bird species classified in the second group.
Amphibians. In the representatives of anurans (common frogs, common toads) and axolotls who were in the experiment, it was not possible to detect the ability to extrapolate.
Fish. All studied fish, including: carps, Minnows are a genus of fish in the carp family. Length no more than 20 cm, weigh up to 100 g. 10 species, in the rivers and lakes of Eurasia and North. America. Some species are an object of fishing (lake minnow in Yakutia).");" onmouseout="nd();" href="javascript:void(0);">minnows, hemichromis, common and silver carp were not able to extrapolate the direction of food movement. Fish can be trained to solve these problems, but they need hundreds of test presentations to learn.
The conducted studies show that the level of development of rational activity can be used to characterize individual taxonomic groups of animals.
The above systematization of animals according to the level of development of their rational activity, of course, cannot claim greater accuracy. However, it undoubtedly reflects the general trend in the development of rational activity in the studied taxonomic groups of vertebrates.
The differences between the studied animals in terms of the level of development of their rational activity turned out to be extremely large. They are especially large within the class of mammals. Such a big difference in the level of rational activity of animals is obviously determined by the ways in which the development of adaptive mechanisms of each branch of the phylogenetic tree of animals took place.

8.5. The role of rational activity in animal behavior

Reasoning activity has undergone a long evolution in the animal ancestors of man, before giving a truly gigantic flash of the human mind.
From this position it inevitably follows that the study of the rational activity of animals as any adaptation of an organism to its environment should be the subject of biological research. Based primarily on such biological disciplines as evolutionary doctrine, Neurophysiology is a branch of animal and human physiology that studies the functions of the nervous system and its main structural units - neurons. onmouseout="nd();" href="javascript:void(0);"> neurophysiology and Genetics - (from the Greek genesis - origin) - the science of the laws of heredity and variability of organisms and methods of managing them. Depending on the object of study, the genetics of microorganisms, plants, animals and humans are distinguished, and on the level of research - molecular genetics, cytogenetics, etc. The foundations of modern genetics were laid by G. Mendel, who discovered the laws of discrete heredity (1865), and the school of T.Kh. Morgan, who substantiated the chromosome theory of heredity (1910s). In the USSR in the 20-30s. An outstanding contribution to genetics was made by the works of N.I. Vavilova, N.K. Koltsova, S.S. Chetverikova, A.S. Serebrovsky and others. From the middle. In the 1930s, and especially after the VASKhNIL session of 1948, the anti-scientific views of T.D. Lysenko (unreasonably called "onmouseout="nd();" href="javascript:void(0);">genetics), one can succeed in objective knowledge of the process of thinking formation.
The study showed that the most accurate assessment of the level of elementary rational activity can be given at the first presentation of the problem, until its solution has been reinforced by a biologically significant stimulus. Any reinforcement of problem solutions introduces elements of learning during its subsequent presentations. The speed of learning to solve a logical problem can only be an indirect indicator of the level of development of rational activity.
In general terms, we can say that the greater the number of laws that bind the elements of the external world, captures the animal, the more developed rational activity it has. Obviously, using such a criterion for evaluating elementary rational activity, it is possible to give the most complete comparative assessment of different taxonomic groups of animals.
The use of the tests developed by us made it possible to assess the level of development of rational activity in different taxonomic groups of vertebrates. It was clearly revealed that fish and amphibians are practically unable to solve problems available to reptiles, birds and mammals. It is significant to note that among birds and mammals there is a huge diversity in the success of solving the proposed problems. In terms of the level of development of rational activity, ravens are comparable to predatory mammals. It can hardly be doubted that the exceptional adaptability of birds from the crow family, which are distributed almost throughout the entire globe, is largely due to the high level of development of their rational activity.
The developed criteria for a quantitative assessment of the level of development of the elementary rational activity of animals made it possible to approach the study of the morphophysiological and genetic foundations of this form of higher nervous activity. Studies have shown that an objective study of rational activity in model experiments on animals is quite possible. The main results of the experimental study can be formulated as the following provisions.
Firstly, it was possible to identify the relationship between the level of development of elementary rational activity and the size of the telencephalon, structural organization Neuron - (from Greek neuron - nerve) 1) a nerve cell consisting of a body and processes extending from it; the main structural and functional unit of the nervous system; 2) a nerve cell, consisting of a body and processes extending from it - relatively short dendrites and a long axon; the main structural and functional unit of the nervous system (see diagram). Neurons conduct nerve impulses from receptors to the central nervous system (sensory neuron), from the central nervous system to the executive organs (motor neuron), interconnect several other nerve cells (intercalary neurons). Neurons interact with each other and with the cells of the executive organs through synapses. Rotifers have 102 neurons, humans have over 1010.");" onmouseout="nd();" href="javascript:void(0);">neurons and establish the leading role of some parts of the brain in the implementation of the studied form to the environment. Higher nervous activity is based on conditioned reflexes and complex unconditioned reflexes (instincts, emotions, etc.). The higher nervous activity of a person is characterized by the presence of not only the 1st signal system, which is also characteristic of animals, but also the 2nd signal system, associated with speech and characteristic only of man. The doctrine of higher nervous activity was created by I.P. Pavlov. ");" onmouseout="nd();" href="javascript:void(0);"> higher nervous activity. We believe that the results of the research give grounds to extend the generally accepted principle in physiology of the confinement of the functions of the nervous system to its structure and to rational activity.
Secondly, it turned out that taxonomic groups of animals with different cytoarchitectonic organization of the brain can have a similar level of development of rational activity. This becomes apparent when comparing not only individual classes of animals, but also when comparing within the same class (for example, primates and dolphins). One of the general biological propositions about the greater conservatism of the final result of formative processes than the paths leading to this is obviously applicable to the implementation of a rational act.
Thirdly, behavior is built on the basis of three main components of higher nervous activity: instincts, learning and reason. Depending on the specific gravity of each of them, one or another form of behavior can be conditionally characterized as instinctive, conditioned reflex or rational. In everyday life, the behavior of vertebrates is an integrated complex of all these components.
One of the most important functions of rational activity is the selection of that information about the structural organization of the environment, which is necessary for constructing a program for the most adequate act of behavior under given conditions.
The behavior of animals is carried out under the leading influence of stimuli that carry information about the environment immediately surrounding them. The system that perceives such information was named by I.P. Pavlov the first signal system of reality.
The process of formation Thinking - 1) the most generalized and indirect form of mental reflection, establishing connections and relationships between cognizable objects. Thinking is the highest level of human knowledge. Allows you to gain knowledge about such objects, properties and relationships of the real world that cannot be directly perceived at the sensory level of knowledge. The forms and laws of thinking are studied by logic, the mechanisms of its flow - by psychology and neurophysiology. Cybernetics analyzes thinking in connection with the tasks of modeling certain mental functions; 2) an indirect reflection of the external world, which is based on impressions of reality and enables a person, depending on the knowledge, skills and abilities he has acquired, to correctly operate information, successfully build his plans and programs of behavior. The intellectual development of the child is carried out in the course of his objective activity and communication, in the course of mastering social experience. Visual-effective, visual-figurative and verbal-logical M. are successive stages of intellectual development. Genetically, the earliest form of M. is visual-effective M., the first manifestations of which in a child can be observed at the end of the first - the beginning of the second year of life, even before mastering active speech. Already the first objective actions of the child have a number of important features. When a practical result is achieved, some signs of an object and its relationship with other objects are revealed; the possibility of their knowledge acts as a property of any subject manipulation. The child encounters objects created by human hands, and so on. enters into subject-practical communication with other people. Initially, an adult is the main source and mediator of a child's acquaintance with objects and ways of using them. Socially developed generalized ways of using objects are the first knowledge (generalizations) that a child learns with the help of an adult from social experience. Visual-figurative M. occurs in preschoolers aged 4-6 years. M.'s connection with practical actions, although preserved, is not as close, direct and immediate as before. In some cases, no practical manipulation with the object is required, but in all cases it is necessary to clearly perceive and visualize the object. Those. preschoolers think only in visual images and do not yet master concepts (in the strict sense). Significant shifts in the intellectual development of the child occur at school age, when teaching becomes its leading activity, aimed at mastering systems of concepts in various subjects. These shifts are expressed in the cognition of ever deeper properties of objects, in the formation of the mental operations necessary for this, in the emergence of new motives for cognitive activity. The mental operations that are formed in younger schoolchildren are still connected with specific material, they are not generalized enough; the resulting concepts are concrete in nature. M. of children of this age is conceptually specific. But younger schoolchildren are already mastering some of the more complex forms of reasoning, they are aware of the power of logical necessity. On the basis of practical and visual-sensory experience, they develop - at first in the simplest forms - verbal-logical M., i.e. M. in the form of abstract concepts. M. now appears not only in the form of practical actions and not only in the form of visual images, but primarily in the form of abstract concepts and reasoning. In middle and senior school ages, schoolchildren become available for more complex cognitive tasks. In the process of solving them, mental operations are generalized, formalized, thereby expanding the range of their transfer and application in new situations. A system of interconnected, generalized and reversible operations is formed. The ability to reason, to substantiate one's judgments, to realize and control the process of reasoning, to master its general methods, to move from its expanded forms to folded forms is developed. A transition is being made from conceptual-concrete to abstract-conceptual M. The intellectual development of the child is characterized by a regular change of stages, in which each previous stage prepares the subsequent ones. With the emergence of new forms of M., the old forms not only do not disappear, but are preserved and developed. For example, visual-effective modeling, which is characteristic of preschoolers, acquires a new content in schoolchildren, finding, in particular, its expression in the solution of increasingly complex structural and technical problems. Verbal-figurative M. also rises to a higher level, manifesting itself in the assimilation of works of poetry, fine arts, and music by schoolchildren. ");" onmouseout="nd();" href="javascript:void(0);">A person's thinking is carried out not only with the help of the first signal system of reality, but mainly under the influence of the information that he receives through speech. Perception is a holistic reflection of objects, situations, and events that occurs when physical stimuli directly act on the receptor surfaces (see Receptor) of the sense organs. Together with the processes of sensation, Perception provides a direct-sensory orientation in the surrounding world. Being a necessary stage of cognition, it is always to a greater or lesser extent associated with thinking, memory, attention, is guided by motivation and has a certain affective-emotional coloring (see Affect, Emotions). It is necessary to distinguish between Perception, adequate to reality, and illusions. Crucial for checking and correcting a perceptual image (from Latin perceptio - perception) is the inclusion of Perception in the processes of practical activity, communication and scientific research. The emergence of the first hypotheses about the nature of Perception dates back to antiquity. In general, the early theories of Perception were consistent with the provisions of traditional associative psychology. The decisive step in overcoming associationism in the interpretation of Perception was made, on the one hand, thanks to the development of I.M. Sechenov's reflex concept of the psyche, and on the other hand, thanks to the works of representatives of Gestalt psychology, who showed the conditionality of the most important phenomena of Perception (such as constancy) by invariable relationships between the components of a perceptual image. The study of the reflex structure of Perception led to the creation of theoretical models of Perception, in which an important role is assigned to efferent (centrifugal), including motor, processes that adjust the work of the perceptual system to the characteristics of the object (A.V. Zaporozhets, A.N. Leontiev). Examples are the movements of a hand feeling an object, the movements of the eyes tracing a visible contour, the tension of the muscles of the larynx reproducing an audible sound. The dynamics of the recognition process in most cases is adequately described by the so-called "onmouseout="nd();" href="javascript:void(0);"> Pavlov called the perception of reality the second signal system. With the help of the second signal system, a person has the opportunity to receive the entire amount knowledge and traditions accumulated by mankind in the process of its historical development.In this respect, the limits of the possibilities of human thinking are enormously different from the possibilities of the elementary rational activity of animals, which in their daily life operate only with very limited ideas about the structural organization of their environment.Unlike animals with the most highly developed elementary rational activity and, probably, from his cave ancestors, a person was able to capture not only empirical laws, but also formulate theoretical laws that formed the basis for understanding the world around us and the development of science. All this, of course, is in no way available to animals. And this is the great qualitative difference between the animal and man.

Glossary of terms

1. Thinking
2. Intelligence
3. Reasoning activity
4. Elementary intellectual activity
5. Visual Action Thinking
6. Creative thinking
7. inductive thinking
8. deductive thinking
9. Abstract logical thinking
10. verbal thinking
11. Analysis
12. Synthesis
13. Comparison
14. Generalization
15. abstraction
16. concept
17. Judgment
18. inference
19. cognitive processes
20. Psychonervous image
21. Psychoneural representation
22. figurative memory
23. working memory
24. Reference memory
25. short term memory
26. long term memory
27. procedural memory
28. Declarative memory
29. figurative representations
30. abstract representations
31. Differential conditioned reflexes
32. Installation for training
33. transitive conclusion
34. Delayed reaction method
35. Latent learning
36. pattern learning
37. radial maze
38. T-shaped maze
39. Maurice water maze
40. Alocentric strategy
41. Egocentric strategy
42. cognitive map
43. empirical laws
44. Law of non-disappearance
45. The law of containment
46. The law of relocation
47. Elementary logic problem
48. Extrapolation of direction of travel
49. Spatial thinking
50. Dimension test

Questions for self-examination

1. What are the main functions of the human intellect?
2. List the main forms of human thinking.
3. What is the 1st signaling system?
4. What is the 2nd signaling system?
5. What, from the point of view of psychologists, are the main criteria for the rudiments of thinking in animals?
6. What is the most characteristic property of rational activity?
7. What is rational activity according to L.V. Krushinsky? What is the role of "Lloyd Morgan's canon" in the study of animal minds?
8. What requirements must be met by tests for rational activity?
9. What are cognitive processes?
10. List the main methods of studying cognitive processes.
11. What methods of studying cognitive processes are based on the development of differential conditioned reflexes?
12. What is a learning setup?
13. What is a transitive conclusion?
14. What is the delayed reaction method?
15. What are cognitive maps?
16. Why use the maze method?
17. What bait-finding strategies do animals use when learning in a maze?
18. Who is the author of the water maze?
19. What methods do animals use to orient themselves in space?
20. What is latent learning?
21. What is the sample selection method?
22. What methods for studying the intelligence of great apes did O. Koehler use?
23. Tell about the intellectual behavior of monkeys in a natural setting.
24. What tests reveal differences between the level of cognitive abilities of great apes and other apes?
25. What is tool activity and what mechanisms can underlie it in animals of different species?
26. What aspects of rational activity are revealed by the tests proposed by L.V. Krushinsky?
27. On the knowledge of what empirical laws is the solution of elementary logical problems based?
28. What is the methodology for studying the ability to extrapolate the direction of movement?
29. What is spatial thinking?
30. Which animals have the highest ability to extrapolate the direction of movement?
31. What is the essence of the test for operating with the empirical dimension of figures?
32. What animals were able to solve the test for "dimension"?

Bibliography

1. Beritashvili I.S. The memory of vertebrates, its characteristics and origin. M., 1974.
2. Voitonis N.Yu. Background of the intellect. M.; L., 1949.
3. Goodall J. Chimpanzees in Nature: Behavior. M, 1992.
4. Darwin C. On the expression of sensations in humans and animals // Collected. op. M., 1953.
5. Dembovsky Ya. Psychology of monkeys. M., 1963.
6. Zorina Z.A., Poletaeva I.I. Elementary thinking of animals. M., 2001.
7. Koehler V. A study of the intelligence of anthropoid apes. M., 1925.
8. Krushinsky L.V. Formation of animal behavior in normal and pathological conditions. M., 1960.
9. Krushinsky L.V. Biological bases of rational activity. 2nd ed. M., 1986.
10. Krushinsky L.V. Fav. works. T. 1. M., 1991.
11. Ladygina-Kots N.N. Constructive and tool activity of higher apes. M., 1959.
12. Mazokhin-Porshnyakov G.A. How to evaluate the intelligence of animals? // Nature. 1989. No. 4. S. 18-25.
13. McFarland D. Animal behavior. M., 1988.
14. Manning O. Behavior of animals. Introductory course. M., 1982.
15. Orbeli L.A. Questions of higher nervous activity. M.; L., 1949.
16. Pavlov I.P. Pavlovian environments. M.; L., 1949.
17. Pazhetnov B.C. My friends are bears. M., 1985.
18. Pazhetnov B.C. Brown bear. M., 1990.
19. Roginsky G.Z. Skills and rudiments of intellectual actions in anthropoids (chimpanzees). L., 1948.
20. Sifard R.M., Cheney D.L. Mind and thinking in monkeys // In the world of science. 1993. No. 2, 3.
21. Happy A.I. Complex forms of behavior of anthropoids. L., 1972.
22. Tolman E. Cognitive maps in rats and humans: Animal psychology and comparative psychology reader. - M., 1997.
23. Fabry C.E. Fundamentals of zoopsychology. M., 1993.
24. Firsov L.A. Memory in Anthropoids: A Physiological Analysis. L., 1972.
25. Firsov L.A. The behavior of anthropoids in natural conditions. L., 1977.
26. Firsov L.A. Higher nervous activity of great apes and the problem of anthropogenesis // Physiology of behavior: neurobiological patterns: A guide to physiology. L., 1987.
27. Schaller J. Year under the sign of the gorilla. M., 1968.
28. Reader in Zoology and Comparative Psychology: Textbook for students of psychology faculties of higher educational institutions in the specialties 52100 and 020400 "Psychology". M., 1997.

Topics of term papers and essays

1. Cognitive processes of animals and methods of their study.
2. Using the method of differential conditioned reflexes to study the cognitive processes of animals.
3. Orientation of animals in space and methods of its study.
4. Methods of labyrinths in the study of complex forms of animal behavior.
5. Intelligence of great apes and methods of its study.
6. Comparative study of the rational activity of animals by methods proposed by L.V. Krushinsky.
7. The rational activity of mammals.
8. The study of the ability of animals to operate with the empirical dimension of figures.
9. Intellectual behavior of birds.
10. The study of the ability of animals to generalize and abstract.
11. The study of the ability of animals to symbolize.
12. The ability of animals to count and its study.

According to leading Russian psychologists, The criteria for the presence in animals of the rudiments of thinking can be the following signs:

"emergency appearance of the answer in the absence of a ready-made solution"(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 regarding the way out of which he does not have a ready-made solution - familiar (i.e., acquired in learning process) or innate”;

"cognitive identification of objective conditions essential for action"(Rubinstein);

"generalized, mediated nature of the reflection of reality; the search and discovery of an essentially new"(Brushlinsky);

"presence and fulfillment of intermediate goals"(Leontiev).

Human thinking has a number of synonyms, such as: "reason", "intellect", "reason", etc. However, when using these terms to describe the thinking of animals, it must be borne in mind that, no matter how complex their behavior may be, we can only talk about the elements and rudiments of the corresponding mental functions of a person.
The most correct one is the one proposed. L.V. Krushinsky term rationalactivity b. It avoids the identification of thought processes in animals and humans. Reasoning activity is different from any form of learning. This form of adaptive behavior can be when an organism first encounters an unusual situation created in its habitat. The fact that the animal immediately, without special training, can decide to adequate performance of a behavioral act, and is the unique feature of rational activity as an adaptive mechanism in diverse, constantly changing environmental conditions. Reasoning activity allows us to consider the adaptive functions of the body not only as self-regulating, but also self-selecting systems. This implies the ability of an organism to make an adequate choice of the most biologically appropriate forms of behavior in new situations. By definition 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 the organism in the environment is possible in animals with a well-developed nervous system.
To date, the following ideas about the thinking of animals 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 - great apes - the ability to generalize makes it possible to assimilate and use intermediary languages ​​at the level of 2-year-old children.

The elements of thought appear in animals in various forms. They can be expressed in the performance of many operations, such as generalization, abstraction, comparison, inference.

Reasonable acts in animals are associated with the processing of multiple sensory information (sound, olfactory, various types of visual-spatial, quantitative, geometric) in various functional areas - 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 an animal and the corresponding structural and functional organization of its brain, the greater the range of intellectual capabilities it possesses.

In highly organized animals (primates, dolphins, corvids), thinking is not limited to the ability to solve individual problems, but is a systemic brain function that manifests itself when solving various tests in the experiment and in a variety of situations in the natural habitat.

W. Koehler(1925), who first studied the problem of animal thinking in an experiment, came to the conclusion that great apes have an intellect that allows them to solve some problem situations not by trial and error, but due to a special mechanism - “insight” (“penetration” or “ insights”), i.e. by understanding the relationships between stimuli and events.

According to W. Koehler, insight is based on the tendency to perceive the whole situation as a whole and, thanks to this, make an adequate decision, and not just automatically respond with individual reactions to individual stimuli. ( insight"- conscious "planned" use of tools in accordance with their mental plan)

The presence of elements of the mind in higher animals is currently beyond doubt by any of the scientists. Intellectual behavior represents the pinnacle of the mental development of animals. At the same time, as 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 gives the greatest adaptive effect and contributes to the survival of individuals and the continuation of the genus during abrupt, rapidly occurring changes in the environment. At the same time, the intellect of even the highest animals is undoubtedly at a lower stage of development than the human intellect, so 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, and all the leading 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. At present, in psychology, there are several definitions of these most 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 A.R. Luria, "the act of thinking arises only when the subject has an appropriate motive that makes the task relevant, and its solution is necessary, and when the subject finds himself in a situation regarding the way out of which he does not have a ready-made solution - familiar (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 a narrow sense. In a broad sense, intelligence is the totality of all cognitive functions of an individual, from sensation and perception to thinking and imagination, in a narrower sense, intelligence is thinking itself.

In the process of human cognition of reality, psychologists note three main functions of the intellect:

● ability to learn;

● operating with symbols;

● the ability to actively master the laws of the environment.

Psychologists distinguish the following forms of human thinking:

● visual-effective, based on the direct perception of objects in the process of actions with them;

● figurative, based on ideas and images;

● inductive, based on the logical conclusion "from the particular to the general" (construction of analogies);

● deductive, based on a logical conclusion "from the general to the particular" or "from the particular to the particular", made in accordance with the rules of logic;

● abstract-logical, or verbal, thinking, which is the most complex form.

Verbal thinking of a person is inextricably linked with speech. It is thanks to speech, i.e. the second signal system, human thinking becomes generalized and mediated.

It is generally accepted that the process of thinking is carried out with the help of the following mental operations - analysis, synthesis, comparison, generalization and abstraction. The result of the process of thinking in humans are concepts, judgments and conclusions.

The problem of animal intelligence

Intellectual behavior is the pinnacle of the mental development of animals. However, speaking about the intellect, the "mind" of animals, they must first be noted that it is extremely difficult to specify exactly which animals can be talked about intellectual behavior, and which ones can not. Obviously, we can only talk about higher vertebrates, but obviously 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, to which A.N. Severtsov paid special attention, showing the decisive importance of higher mental abilities for the survival of individuals and procreation in the face of abrupt, rapidly occurring changes in the environment.

The prerequisite and basis for the development of animal intelligence is manipulation, primarily with biologically "neutral" objects. This is especially true for 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 in the course of manipulation, the deepest and most comprehensive acquaintance with new objects or new properties of objects already familiar to the animal occurs. In the course of manipulation, especially when performing complex manipulations, the experience of the animal's activity is generalized, generalized knowledge about the subject components of the environment is formed, and it is this generalized motor-sensory experience that forms the main basis of the monkeys' intelligence.

Destructive actions are of particular cognitive value, since they allow obtaining information about the internal structure of objects. During manipulation, 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 whole and having properties of 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 broadly transfer skills to new situations. This ability is fully developed in higher vertebrates, although it manifests itself in different animals to different 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 based on previous experience, are the most important elements of animal intelligence. And yet, in themselves, these qualities are still insufficient to serve as criteria for the intellect, the thinking of animals.

A distinctive feature of the intelligence of animals 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 its structure.

With the development of intellectual forms of behavior, the phases of solving problems acquire a clear diversity of quality: previously merged into a single process, the activity is differentiated into the phase of preparation and the phase of implementation. It is the preparation phase that constitutes a characteristic feature of intellectual behavior. The second phase includes, in itself, 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 in solving a problem the animal does not use one stereotypically performed method, but tries different methods that are the result of previously accumulated experience. Consequently, instead of trials of different movements, as is the case with non-intellectual actions, with intellectual behavior there are trials of various operations, which makes it possible to solve the same problem in different ways. The transference and trials of various operations in solving a complex problem find their expression among monkeys, in particular, in the fact that they practically never use tools in exactly the same way.

Along with all this, one must clearly understand the biological limitations of the intelligence of animals. Like all other forms of behavior, it is entirely determined by the way of life and purely biological patterns, the limits of which even the most intelligent monkey cannot step over.

In conclusion, we have to admit that the problem of animal intelligence is still completely insufficiently studied. In essence, 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 the rational activity of animals

According to leading Russian psychologists, the criteria for the presence of the rudiments of thinking in animals can be the following signs:

● "an emergency appearance of an answer in the absence of a ready-made solution" (Luria);

● "cognitive selection of objective conditions essential for action" (Rubinshtein);

● "generalized, mediated nature of the reflection of reality; the search for and discovery of an essentially new" (Brushlinsky);

● "presence and fulfillment of intermediate goals" (Leontiev).

Human thinking has a number of synonyms, such as: "reason", "intellect", "reason", etc. However, when using these terms to describe the thinking of animals, it must be borne in mind that, no matter how complex their behavior may be, we can only talk about the elements and rudiments of the corresponding mental functions of a person.

The most correct is the one proposed by L.V. Krushinsky termed rational activity. It avoids the identification of thought processes in animals and humans. The most characteristic property of the rational activity of animals is their ability to capture the simplest empirical laws that connect objects and phenomena of the environment, and the ability to operate with these laws when building programs of behavior in new situations.

Reasoning activity is different from any form of learning. This form of adaptive behavior can be carried out at the first encounter of an organism with an unusual situation created in its environment. 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. Reasoning activity allows us to consider the adaptive functions of the body not only as self-regulating, but also self-selecting systems. This implies the ability of an organism to make an adequate choice of the most biologically appropriate forms of behavior in new situations. By definition 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 the organism in the environment is possible in animals with a well-developed nervous system.



The presence of elements of the mind in higher animals is currently beyond doubt by any of the scientists. Intellectual behavior represents the pinnacle of the mental development of animals. At the same time, as 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 gives the greatest adaptive effect and contributes to the survival of individuals and the continuation of the genus during abrupt, rapidly occurring changes in the environment. At the same time, the intellect of even the highest animals is undoubtedly at a lower stage of development than the human intellect, so 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, and all the leading 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 criteria for the presence of the rudiments of thinking in animals can be the following signs:

• - "an emergency appearance of an answer in the absence of a ready-made solution" (Luria);
• - "cognitive selection of objective conditions essential for action" (Rubinshtein);
• - “generalized, mediated nature of the reflection of reality; finding and discovering something essentially new” (Brushlinsky);
• - "the presence and implementation of intermediate goals" (Leontiev).

Human thinking has a number of synonyms, such as: "reason", "intellect", "reason", etc. However, when using these terms to describe the thinking of animals, it must be borne in mind that, no matter how complex their behavior may be, we can only talk about the elements and rudiments of the corresponding mental functions of a person.

The most correct is the one proposed by L.V. Krushinsky termed rational activity. It avoids the identification of thought processes in animals and humans. The most characteristic property of the rational activity of animals is their ability to capture the simplest empirical laws that connect objects and phenomena of the environment, and the ability to operate with these laws when building programs of behavior in new situations.

Reasoning activity is different from any form of learning. This form of adaptive behavior can be carried out at the first encounter of an organism with an unusual situation created in its environment. 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. Reasoning activity allows us to consider the adaptive functions of the body not only as self-regulating, but also self-selecting systems. This implies the ability of an organism to make an adequate choice of the most biologically appropriate forms of behavior in new situations. By definition 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 the organism in the environment is possible in animals with a well-developed nervous system.