Anecdotal cognitivism
[4] Presenters, such as David Attenborough on BBC England and George Page on PBS America, used anecdotes and anthropomorphic rhetoric thus providing access to a wider audience, increasing awareness and interest in animal behaviour and their relationship with humans and nature.
Contemporary scientific interest in animal minds, cognition and behaviour stem from Charles Darwin's nineteenth century seminal text, Theory of Evolution.
[8] In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, anecdotal cognitivism's method was widely criticised in the broader Western scientific community which had come to favour behaviourism.
[15] According to Professor Frans de Waal from Emory University, Romanes reliance on these singular events and Darwin's internal subjective thinking to explain his own research experiences is what led subsequent scientists to favour the behaviourist approach.
[16] Behaviourists were also concerned with the lack of statistical information collected with a particular interest in certain behaviours and a perceived bias from subjects whilst relaying their stories.
[17][18] Lloyd Morgan, a British psychologist and student of Romanes, removed the anecdotal methodologies from his work to avoid criticism and to ensure an objective systematic speculation and research approach.
"[28] Both Edward Thorndike's puzzle boxes and PhD thesis, penned in 1898 at Columbia University, were modelled off previous work by Romanes and Morgan.
Classical Ethologists, Konrad Lorenz (1903-1989) and Niko Tinbergen (1907-1988), undertook a return to Darwin's evolutionary theory and natural history with a reliance on more meticulous anecdotal and anthropomorphic methodologies.
[38] The research carried out by both scientists focused on observations, free use of anecdotes and an emphasis on emotion and inner states, "instincts", "drives", "motivational impulses" and "outward flowing nervous energy".
[40] Though there are many differences between the schools of behaviourism and ethology, they agreed upon scepticism of the "folk" interpretations of over emphasising anecdotes to explain animal intelligence.
In current research this methodology has evolved and is no longer called 'anecdotal cognitivism,' with the scientific vernacular having changed to 'cognitive ethology' a term coined by Don Griffin, which involves anecdotal and anthropomorphic observations with reference to the cognition, internal states and behaviour analysis of animals.
In unusual or rare animal behaviour, an "incident" or "qualitative report" is written rather than referencing the term "anecdote", due to the negative connotation that resulted from Darwin's method.
[44] There has been a significant shift from the behaviourist methodologies, as Professor Frans de Waal states, "We seek ecological validity in our studies and follow the advice of Uexkull, Lorenz, and Imanishi, who encouraged human empathy as a way to understand other species.
A professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Toronto, Shettleworth maintains the most exciting part of current study in animal cognition is detail and subtlety in the human picture of "how other species minds are both like and not like ours.
"[52] Documentary film production, a source of education and entertainment popularised by natural history subjects including animal behaviour, became prominent in the later decades of the twentieth century.
[53] George Page writes of anecdotal cases in Inside the Animal Mind, of primatologist Jane Goodall who cites evidence of emotions and mental states of chimpanzees, who adopt young chimps that are not their own.
Shelah, Spark and Czar in his teen years, Sappho, Fun, Dash, Pincher and Nina in his early adulthood and when he had his own children Bob, Bran, Quiz, Tartar, Tony, Pepper, Butterton and Polly, whom he regularly incorporated into his studies.
[60] Goodall was criticised for naming the chimps she observed at Gombe in Tanzania, she called one David Greybeard and showed photo's of him using tools to access termites at the Zoological Society of London conference in 1962.
[61] Sir Solly Zuckerman, an anatomist at the Zoological Society of London April 1962, criticised Goodall for using anecdotes, "There are those who are here and who prefer anecdote – and what I must confess I regard as sometimes unbounded speculation, in scientific work it is far safer to base one's major conclusions and generalisations on a concordant and large body of data than on a few contradictory and isolated observations, the explanation of which sometimes leaves a little to be desired.
Some behaviours and emotions observed included nervousness, aggression, hugging, kissing, grudges, kicking, punching, subordination to a dominant character and friendship.
[63] Jane Goodall writes about her studies of the Chimpanzee's in Gombe in her book, Reason for Hope, in anthropomorphic terms enabling the reader a more personal understanding of her observations encountered in Tanzania.
