300352 VO Animal Social Cognition (2023W)

This lecture course focuses on ‘higher forms’ of cognition (also known as complex cognition) and its expression in the social domain. Skills such as imitation, deception, language and culture are often considered as human-specific. Recent research reveals building blocks of these abilities not only in primates but also in some distantly related animals, raising the possibility that higher cognitive skills have evolved multiple times. The lecture course provides an overview of recent concepts and methods, and is structured in three units (social complexity, social knowledge, social learning). It aims to raise awareness for an evolutionary perspective to cognition and the proper use of the comparative approach.