Evolution and development of cognitive meta-processes

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 25240020
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Cognitive science
• Research Institution: Kyoto University
• Principal Investigator: Fujita Kazuo 京都大学, 文学研究科, 教授 (80183101)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): ITAKURA Shoji 京都大学, 大学院文学研究科, 教授 (50211735)
• Project Period (FY): 2013-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: 比較認知心理学 / メタ認知 / エピソード記憶 / 他者理解 / 進化 / 発達

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The purpose of this project was to analyze evolution and development of cognitive metaprocesses -- active access to internal private mental events -- in various animals and human children, and to elucidate how this process helps understanding of others. Some of the major findings include: a) many nonhuman animals including dogs, cats, etc. are able to retrieve and adaptively use incidentally-encoded memory trace of a single previous episode. b) 5-6 year olds are able to prepare necessary information in predicting their own knowledge states in the future, and this ability is partly shared with pigeons. c) dogs evaluate people by observing their interactions from a third-party viewpoint. d) dogs are able to use their previous experience to understand meaning of others’ behavior and function of objects.

Free Research Field

比較認知科学