Is Floyd Morgan's Canon To Evaluate Truly Sophisticated Cognition?

Sophisticated cognition in non-human animals can be defined as behaviour that shows more than imitation and simple learning, but true understanding and rationalizing. Simpler forms of learning can be summarized as trial and error processes, instrumental conditioning, and associative learning. Comparative psychology research has revealed that some non-human animals have supposedly sophisticated cognition, however interpretations are not always best justified by the explanations that are provided. Often a more parsimonious explanation may better explain the observed behaviour. This claim relates to Lloyd Morgan’s Canon (1903), which is a general rule of comparative psychology stating that observed animal behaviour should be explained by the simplest processes, not superior psychological explanations. Therefore, this essay will use the ideology of Morgan’s canon to evaluate apparently sophisticated cognition such as: social-cognitive abilities, problem solving, and the

Boysen and Berntson (1989) discovered that after extensive training a chimpanzee was able to point to the correct Arabic number (1-4) that matched the number of food pieces. When answers were correct the chimp was rewarded directly with that food. However, Boysen and Berntson (1995) provide evidence that this ability was simply rote learning. They used chimps that had been previously trained to recognize numbers up to 4. The task involved chimp X choosing between two different quantities of food. Whatever chimp X chose chimp Y would receive, therefore chimps should choose the small quantity if they want the most food. They found chimps were unable to do this. However, when food was replaced with numerals they could solve this task. This provides conclusive support that chimps learnt the shape of numbers through rote learning, as they could not truly understand quantities when presented with untrained stimuli