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dc.contributor.authorJapyassú, Hilton F.
dc.contributor.authorLaland, Kevin Neville
dc.date.accessioned2017-03-15T09:30:11Z
dc.date.available2017-03-15T09:30:11Z
dc.date.issued2017-05
dc.identifier.citationJapyassú , H F & Laland , K N 2017 , ' Extended spider cognition ' , Animal Cognition , vol. 20 , no. 3 , pp. 375-395 . https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-017-1069-7en
dc.identifier.issn1435-9448
dc.identifier.otherPURE: 248666011
dc.identifier.otherPURE UUID: ba7cd35a-8d6b-4fe2-8d98-55ef4278b033
dc.identifier.otherScopus: 85011844271
dc.identifier.otherWOS: 000399695800001
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10023/10466
dc.descriptionHFJ received a visiting professor fellowship from Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq - Brazil) (PDE PDE232691/2014-2). Research supported in part by a Grant from the John Templeton Foundation to KNL.en
dc.description.abstractThere is a tension between the conception of cognition as a central nervous system (CNS) process, and a view of cognition as extending towards the body or the contiguous environment. The centralised conception requires large or complex nervous systems to cope with complex environments. Conversely, the extended conception involves the outsourcing of information processing to the body or environment, thus making fewer demands on the processing power of the CNS. The evolution of extended cognition should be particularly favoured among small, generalist predators such as spiders, and here we review the literature to evaluate the fit of empirical data with these contrasting models of cognition. Spiders do not seem to be cognitively limited, displaying a large diversity of learning processes, from habituation to contextual learning, including a sense of numerosity. To tease apart the central from the extended cognition, we apply the mutual manipulability criterion, testing the existence of reciprocal causal links between the putative elements of the system. We conclude that the web threads and configurations are integral parts of the cognitive systems. The extension of cognition to the web helps to explain some puzzling features of spider behaviour and seems to promote evolvability within the group, enhancing innovation through cognitive connectivity to variable habitat features. Graded changes in relative brain size could also be explained by outsourcing information processing to environmental features. More generally, niche-constructed structures emerge as prime candidates for extending animal cognition, generating the selective pressures that help to shape the evolving cognitive system.
dc.format.extent21
dc.language.isoeng
dc.relation.ispartofAnimal Cognitionen
dc.rights© The Author(s) 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.en
dc.subjectExtended cognitionen
dc.subjectModular cognitionen
dc.subjectWeb buildingen
dc.subjectEvolvabilityen
dc.subjectNiche constructionen
dc.subjectQH301 Biologyen
dc.subject.lccQH301en
dc.titleExtended spider cognitionen
dc.typeJournal itemen
dc.description.versionPublisher PDFen
dc.contributor.institutionUniversity of St Andrews. School of Biologyen
dc.contributor.institutionUniversity of St Andrews. Scottish Oceans Instituteen
dc.contributor.institutionUniversity of St Andrews. Institute of Behavioural and Neural Sciencesen
dc.contributor.institutionUniversity of St Andrews. Centre for Social Learning & Cognitive Evolutionen
dc.contributor.institutionUniversity of St Andrews. Centre for Biological Diversityen
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-017-1069-7
dc.description.statusPeer revieweden
dc.date.embargoedUntil2017-02-07


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