Sex and species differences in cognition and emotion: An evolutionary approach

When studied as biological processes, cognition and emotion are amenable to analysis within evolutionary theory. In this thesis, I first describe the principles involved, historical approaches and opposition to this type of analysis (Chapter 1). I then present examples of cognition used by nonhuman animals during ordinary foraging activities (Chapter 2). Chapters 3 and 4 present practical guides to studying love and consciousness using a comparative evolutionary framework and advantages of this approach over other approaches. The following chapters present empirical investigations of cognition in a comparative framework. These studies examine: written transitive inference in human males and females and its relation to spatial cognition (Chapter 5); nonverbal transitive inference in human males and females and its relation to spatial cognition and awareness (Chapter 6); reasoning about vertical displacement in an American crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos; Chapter 7); and memory for passively presented song in female zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata; Chapter 8). It is concluded that a comparative evolutionary approach is an appropriate and potentially productive method for studying cognition and emotion.