Primate Cognition

First published in 1997, Primate Cognition was a groundbreaking and highly successful book that set the agenda for a new field of study. Borrowing theoretical constructs and paradigms from human cognitive science and developmental psychology, the book reviewed all of the empirical research existing at that time concerning both physical cognition (space and objects, tools and causality, features and categories, and quantities) as well as social cognition (social knowledge and interaction, social strategies and communication, social learning and culture, and theory of mind).

Since that time research on primate cognition has burgeoned, and this all-new second edition mainly focuses on research conducted after 1997. It is divided into two volumes, the current volume on Primate Social Cognition and a forthcoming volume on Primate Physical Cognition. Existing areas of research are updated with the latest findings, and there are several areas of research that for all practical purposes did not exist at the time of the first edition, for example, on prosocial behavior, behavior in social dilemmas, and metacognition. There is also a chapter on theories of primate social cognition and an account of how the human primate fits into the overall evolutionary picture. This second edition of Primate Cognition provides an up-to-date survey of the field.

Review from previous edition "Fin de siécle primatology is an exuberant, contentious, and ambitious discipline. . . . Those who took classes in primatology as few as 5 to 10 years ago would not recognize many of the current issues, a short list of examples being sexual selection, phylogenetic weighting in comparative analyses, gut-brain tradeoffs in the evolution of energy and tissue allocation, and reciprocity and retribution. Primate Cognition is a superb example of this new, reinvigorated primatology. . . . Tomasello and Call accomplish a meticulous merging of primate behavior, recent insights from cognitive and developmental psychology on the multidimensionality of cognitive abilities, and a good understanding of primate evolution to critically analyze what is and is not yet known about cognition in nonhuman primates."

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