This book presents an overview of selected topics in comparative cognition, which is the study of behaviour and mental activities in nonhuman animals. Human psychological capacities are often used as a heuristic by comparative cognitive scientists, whose tasks include designing valid procedures for studying species' sensory, linguistic or manipulatory abilities that differ from those of humans. Nonetheless, researchers have developed many original ways to gain insights into how other species perceive the world, store and integrate information, and communicate. The contributors to this book have all been involved in such work, and will present some of the approaches that have led to clear advances in our understanding of cognitive processes in other species. The chapters integrate a review of past literature with recent work, covering a variety of subject species including birds, domestic dogs and cats, and nonhuman primates. All contributors have worked with or been otherwise influenced by Professor Kazuo Fujita, to whom the volume will be dedicated. Fujita's openness to research on various topics and species is reflected in the diversity of the chapters presented.The book will be of interest to students and more experienced researchers in diverse fields including psychology, anthropology, biology and veterinary studies.

James R. Anderson is Professor in Psychology at Kyoto University, Japan. He has previously held positions at the Université Louis Pasteur (Strasbourg, France) and the University of Stirling (Scotland). For several decades his research has focused mainly on social behavior and communication, as well as learning and cognition in various nonhuman primate species. He has also conducted research on environmental enrichment for captive primates, and studied baboons and chimpanzees in west Africa. Many of his studies have been collaborative projects with psychologists and primatologists from various countries and several continents. Hika Kuroshima is Associate Professor in Psychology at Kyoto University, Japan. She graduated with a BA from Osaka City University in 1998, and received her PhD in Psychology from Kyoto University Graduate School of Letters in 2003, for her research on social cognition in squirrel monkeys and capuchin monkeys. She has been one of Prof. Fujita's many students in the Graduate School of Letters at Kyoto, where she currently directs the Comparative Cognitive Science Laboratory, following Prof. Fujita's retirement. Her main research focus is social cognition in New World monkeys and companion animals, topics on which she has collaborated with co-editor Anderson since she was a Masters course student.