Acoustics Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Wohllebengasse 12-14, 1040, Vienna, Austria.
Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology, University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, Savoyenstrasse 1, 1160, Vienna, Austria.
Anim Cogn. 2023 Jan;26(1):97-116. doi: 10.1007/s10071-022-01735-0. Epub 2022 Dec 27.
Humans are an interesting subject of study in comparative cognition. While humans have a lot of anecdotal and subjective knowledge about their own minds and behaviors, researchers tend not to study humans the way they study other species. Instead, comparisons between humans and other animals tend to be based on either assumptions about human behavior and cognition, or very different testing methods. Here we emphasize the importance of using insider knowledge about humans to form interesting research questions about animal cognition while simultaneously stepping back and treating humans like just another species as if one were an alien researcher. This perspective is extremely helpful to identify what aspects of cognitive processes may be interesting and relevant across the animal kingdom. Here we outline some examples of how this objective human-centric approach has helped us to move forward knowledge in several areas of animal acoustic cognition (rhythm, harmonicity, and vocal units). We describe how this approach works, what kind of benefits we obtain, and how it can be applied to other areas of animal cognition. While an objective human-centric approach is not useful when studying traits that do not occur in humans (e.g., magnetic spatial navigation), it can be extremely helpful when studying traits that are relevant to humans (e.g., communication). Overall, we hope to entice more people working in animal cognition to use a similar approach to maximize the benefits of being part of the animal kingdom while maintaining a detached and scientific perspective on the human species.
人类是比较认知研究中一个有趣的课题。虽然人类对自己的思维和行为有很多轶事和主观的了解，但研究人员倾向于不像研究其他物种那样研究人类。相反，人类与其他动物之间的比较往往基于对人类行为和认知的假设，或者使用非常不同的测试方法。在这里，我们强调了利用关于人类的内部知识来形成关于动物认知的有趣研究问题的重要性，同时退后一步，将人类视为与其他物种一样，就像外星研究人员一样。这种观点对于确定认知过程的哪些方面在动物王国中可能是有趣和相关的非常有帮助。在这里，我们概述了一些例子，说明这种客观的以人类为中心的方法如何帮助我们在动物声学认知（节奏、和谐性和发声单元）的几个领域取得进展。我们描述了这种方法的工作原理、我们获得的好处以及如何将其应用于动物认知的其他领域。虽然当研究人类中不存在的特征（例如，磁性空间导航）时，客观的以人类为中心的方法没有用处，但当研究与人类相关的特征（例如，通信）时，它非常有帮助。总的来说，我们希望吸引更多从事动物认知研究的人使用类似的方法，在保持对人类物种的超然和科学观点的同时，最大限度地发挥作为动物王国一部分的好处。
