Affirming Darwin: rule-based generalization and analogical reasoning in rats.

Darwin's conception of evolution by natural selection emphasizes the continuity between human and nonhuman species; it therefore regards differences between human and non-human minds as differences "of degree, not of kind" (Darwin, 1871). Yet recently, a number of theories have been formulated that do posit a fundamental difference between human and non-human cognition (Premack, 2010). One of the most prominent of these theories holds that a central human capacity not shared by other mammals (let alone non-mammalian animals) is the capacity for analogical reasoning and rule-based generalization (Penn, Holyoak, & Povinelli, 2008). Our claim is that this assertion is presently underdetermined by the data. Building on our own previous work on causal reasoning in rats (Beckers, De Houwer, Urushihara, & Miller, 2006), we aim to investigate whether or not rats are capable of forward and retrospective analogical transfer and generalization of rules, and to what extent rats' generalization of exceptions to causal rules is sensitive to fine-grained contextual control (Wheeler, Beckers, & Miller, 2008).

Keywords:Pavlovian conditioning, Analogy, Darwin, Rule learning, Causal cognition, Comparative psychology

Disciplines:Animal biology, Biological and physiological psychology, Human experimental psychology, Animal experimental and comparative psychology, Applied psychology