Many of the basic concepts of animal cognition were borrowed from human cognitive psychology. It is, therefore, hardly surprising to discover that a number of controversial issues, that have been raised about the nature of human cognition have appeared in discussions of animal cognition. Two such issues which often obfuscate the nature of animal cognition and the rationale for its study are the purported introspective basis of human cognitive psychology and the validity of studying processes which cannot be observed directly.

The first of these issues, which is mainly of historical interest, is mentioned only to emphasize the unconscious nature of cognitive processes attributed to animals and to make clear that objections to animal cognition that are based upon its "mentalistic" nature are no longer relevant. It is, of course, true that early students of animal behavior, or "animal intelligence" as it was then called, speculated freely about the consciousness, feelings, ideas, images, etc. of animals [e.g., Romanes ( 1882), Morgan ( 1894, p. 77), Thorndike ( 1911, p. 16). Such speculations provoked two kinds of reactions from psychologists who argued against reference to cognitive entities in the analysis of animal behavior.

Watson (1914) dismissed them on the grounds that they could not be observed objectively. Accordingly, "psychology must discard all references to consciousness." Skinner ( 1938, 1950) simply questioned their explanatory value. Saying that an animal did X because it "believed" that X would lead to a reward was, for Skinner, a vacuous exercise in directing attention away from observable independent variables to an inner belief whose features coincided exactly with those needed to account for X.

While questions about the nature of consciousness in animals still arise (e.g., Griffin, 1976, 1978), it has not been a major issue in the recent revival of interest in animal cognition. Just as the modern rationale for using human cognitive terms is not based upon arguments that appeal to consciousness or to introspective reports, the rationale for the study of cognitive processes in animals requires no reference to animal consciousness. Both in human and animal cognition it is assumed that the normal state of affairs is unconscious activity and thought. Indeed, additional processes must be postulated in order to account for one's consciousness of activities, perceptions, thoughts, and so on (cf. Pylyshyn, 1973, 1981; Skinner, 1969). In this respect it is interesting to note a rare point of agreement between such dissimilar psychologists as Freud, Skinner, and modern investigators of human cognition.

Exorcising the ghosts of consciousness and introspection has proved to be a much easier task than demonstrating and defining the unconscious processes that constitute the subject matter of animal cognition. It is not too great an oversimplification to observe that many of the major recent advances in animal cognition are best characterized as convincing demonstrations of the inadequacies of so-called S-R models of animal behavior, -models which rely exclusively on observable (or potentially observable) stimuli and responses. On the other hand, less progress has been made in characterizing the nature of the cognitive processes whose existence has been demonstrated clearly by a wide variety of recent studies. . .

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