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Cognitive Ecology: Animal Movement and Collective Decision-Making

dc.contributor.advisorDukas, Reuven
dc.contributor.authorKashetsky, Tovah
dc.contributor.departmentPsychologyen_US
dc.date.accessioned2022-01-05T14:44:20Z
dc.date.available2022-01-05T14:44:20Z
dc.date.issued2021
dc.description.abstractCognition shapes how we perceive and react to our environment. Throughout my Master of Science, I have studied two major fields of animal cognition. My thesis first reports on the cognitive aspects of animal navigation in home ranging and seasonal migration, then I explore the development of group expertise through extensive experience with collective decision-making. The key contributions of the first manuscript (Chapter 2) are a condensed yet detailed summary of the behaviours involved in individual and collective animal movement, followed by research ideas to fill the gaps of the current literature. The key contribution of the second manuscript (Chapter 3) is developing an experiment to study group expertise, a topic that currently lacks controlled experiments, via testing the effect of experience on collective decision-making. This thesis expands the existing knowledge on animal movement and collective decision-making.en_US
dc.description.degreeMaster of Science (MSc)en_US
dc.description.degreetypeThesisen_US
dc.description.layabstractCognition is the process of attaining, processing, and using information. Perception, learning, and memory are the main cognitive processes that are responsible for how we understand the world around us. In my thesis, I first review the cognitive processes involved in short-distance and long-distance animal movements. Secondly, I examine how a specific type of cognition, collective decision-making, improves with experience. Together, I reflect on various pillars of animal cognition, discuss my contributions to the field, and suggest further research ideas.en_US
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/11375/27264
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.subjectdecision-makingen_US
dc.subjectcollective intelligenceen_US
dc.subjectmovement ecologyen_US
dc.subjectcognitionen_US
dc.subjectexpertiseen_US
dc.subjectnavigationen_US
dc.titleCognitive Ecology: Animal Movement and Collective Decision-Makingen_US
dc.typeThesisen_US

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