Search research articles

ABOUT JoVE

Overview Leadership Blog JoVE Help Center

AUTHORS

Publishing Process Editorial Board Scope & Policies Peer Review FAQ Submit

LIBRARIANS

Testimonials Subscriptions Access Resources Library Advisory Board FAQ

RESEARCH

JoVE Journal Methods Collections JoVE Encyclopedia of Experiments Archive

EDUCATION

JoVE Core JoVE Business JoVE Science Education JoVE Lab Manual Faculty Resource Center Faculty Site

Terms & Conditions of Use

Related Concept Videos

Cognitivism

Cognitivism

Cognitive psychology emerged as a significant field in the mid-20th century. It focused on understanding humans' internal mental processes. This approach emphasizes how people perceive, remember, think, and solve problems—elements critical to human cognition.
Previously dominated by behaviorism, which prioritized observable behaviors and largely ignored mental processes, psychology transformed in the 1950s. Cognitive psychologists argue that understanding how we think and process information is...

Evolutionary Psychology

Evolutionary Psychology

Evolutionary psychology explores the origins of human behavior and mental processes by framing them within the context of natural selection, a theory famously propounded by Charles Darwin. This field asserts that many behaviors common across human societies — ranging from instinctive fear reactions to complex social interactions — arose as evolutionary adaptations. These adaptations enhanced the survival and reproductive success of our ancestors, thereby becoming embedded in the human psyche...

Introduction to Cognitive Psychology

Introduction to Cognitive Psychology

Cognitive psychology is the field of psychology dedicated to examining how people think. It attempts to explain how and why we think the way we do by studying the interactions among human thinking, emotion, creativity, language, and problem-solving, as well as other cognitive processes. Cognitive psychology studies how information is processed and manipulated in remembering, thinking, and knowing.
This field emerged in the mid-20th century, following a period dominated by behaviorism, which...

Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development from Childhood into Adulthood

Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development from Childhood into Adulthood

Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development emphasizes the role of thinking in a child's learning process, suggesting that children are naturally curious about their environment. His approach to development is discontinuous, proposing that cognitive abilities progress through distinct stages, each with unique characteristics. Central to Piaget's theory is schemata—mental structures that allow individuals to understand and interpret the world.
Schemata: Building Blocks of Knowledge
Schemata...

Contemporary Psychology

Contemporary Psychology

Psychology explores human behavior and mental processes through various lenses, each offering unique insights. This overview examines key subfields, including biopsychology, evolutionary, developmental, personality, and social psychology, highlighting their approaches and contributions to understanding complex human behaviors.
Biopsychology
Biopsychology, also known as biological psychology or behavioral neuroscience, focuses on the biological underpinnings of behavior and mental processes. It...

Evolutionary Relationships through Genome Comparisons

Evolutionary Relationships through Genome Comparisons

Genome comparison is one of the excellent ways to interpret the evolutionary relationships between organisms. The basic principle of genome comparison is that if two species share a common feature, it is likely encoded by the DNA sequence conserved between both species. The advent of genome sequencing technologies in the late 20th century enabled scientists to understand the concept of conservation of domains between species and helped them to deduce evolutionary relationships across diverse...

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by

Same author

Sensorimotor Complexity and Cognition as Predictors of Primate Brain Size.

American journal of biological anthropology·2026

Same author

Female Affiliation and Status in Semi-Free-Ranging Chimpanzees.

American journal of biological anthropology·2026

Same author

Lethal conflict after group fission in wild chimpanzees.

Science (New York, N.Y.)·2026

Same author

Maternal androgens shape vocal begging patterns in meerkats, providing competitive advantages in dominant matrilines.

Hormones and behavior·2026

Same author

Host traits and environmental factors shape infection heterogeneity in wild rat-protozoa networks.

ISME communications·2026

Same author

Making friends in an asymmetric game: the establishment of male-female grooming exchanges in vervet monkeys.

Proceedings. Biological sciences·2026

Search research articles

Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 29, 2026

Creating Objects and Object Categories for Studying Perception and Perceptual Learning

Creating Objects and Object Categories for Studying Perception and Perceptual Learning

Published on: November 2, 2012

How does cognition evolve? Phylogenetic comparative psychology.

Evan L MacLean¹, Luke J Matthews, Brian A Hare

¹Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, Duke University, Box 90383, Durham, NC 27708, USA. maclean@duke.edu

Animal Cognition

|September 20, 2011

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Animal studies can now test cognitive evolution using comparative psychology and evolutionary biology. Phylogenetic methods reveal how cognitive traits evolve across species and their ancestral states.

More Related Videos

A Comparative Approach for Quantitative Cell Counting Studies in Widely Different Mammalian Brains

A Comparative Approach for Quantitative Cell Counting Studies in Widely Different Mammalian Brains

Published on: January 16, 2026

Using a Comparative Species Approach to Investigate the Neurobiology of Paternal Responses

Using a Comparative Species Approach to Investigate the Neurobiology of Paternal Responses

Published on: September 19, 2011

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: May 29, 2026

Creating Objects and Object Categories for Studying Perception and Perceptual Learning

Creating Objects and Object Categories for Studying Perception and Perceptual Learning

Published on: November 2, 2012

A Comparative Approach for Quantitative Cell Counting Studies in Widely Different Mammalian Brains

A Comparative Approach for Quantitative Cell Counting Studies in Widely Different Mammalian Brains

Published on: January 16, 2026

Using a Comparative Species Approach to Investigate the Neurobiology of Paternal Responses

Using a Comparative Species Approach to Investigate the Neurobiology of Paternal Responses

Published on: September 19, 2011

Area of Science:

Evolutionary biology
Comparative psychology
Animal cognition

Background:

Animal studies are increasingly vital for understanding cognitive evolution.
Comparative psychology offers new methods to study animal cognition across species.
Evolutionary biology provides quantitative approaches to analyze trait distribution.

Purpose of the Study:

To explain how integrating comparative psychology and evolutionary biology can address questions about cognitive trait evolution.
To highlight the utility of phylogenetic methods in studying cognitive evolution.
To demonstrate how phylogenetic methods can guide species selection for hypothesis testing.

Main Methods:

Utilizing quantitative phylogenetic methods to analyze cognitive traits.
Correlating cognitive abilities with life history, morphology, and socio-ecological variables.
Assessing the predictive power of phylogenetic relatedness on cognitive skills.
Estimating ancestral cognitive states from extant species data.

Main Results:

Phylogenetic methods enable quantitative testing of cognitive trait correlations.
These methods measure the influence of evolutionary relatedness on cognitive skills.
Phylogenetic targeting optimizes species selection for evolutionary studies.

Conclusions:

Integrating comparative psychology and evolutionary biology offers powerful insights into cognitive evolution.
Phylogenetic methods are crucial for understanding the history and processes of cognitive trait evolution.
This integrated approach answers fundamental questions about the distribution and evolution of animal cognition.