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Animal expertise, conscious or not

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Abstract

Rossano (Cognition 89:207, 2003) proposes expertise as an indicator of consciousness in humans and other animals. Since there is strong evidence that the development of expertise requires deliberate practice (Ericsson in The road to excellence: the acquisition of expert performance in the arts and sciences, sports and games 1996), and deliberate practice appears to be outside of the bounds of unconscious processing, then any signs of expertise development in an animal are indicators of consciousness. Rossano’s argument may lead to an unsolvable debate about animal consciousness while causing researchers to overlook the underlying reality of animal expertise. This article provides evidence indicative of animals meeting each of the three definitions of expertise established in the scientific literature: expertise as a social construction, expertise as exceptional performance, and expertise as knowledge. In addition, cases of deliberate practice by non-human animals are offered. Acknowledging some animals as experts, regardless of consciousness, is warranted by the research findings and would prove useful in solving many issues remaining in the human expertise literature.

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Acknowledgments

The author thanks Kathy Springsteen and members of the granting committee at Wilmington College for funding this work. The author, in addition, thanks William Dember, Donald Schumsky, Daniel Wheeler, three anonymous reviewers, and the editorial staff of Animal Cognition for their helpful feedback.

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  1. Department of Psychology, Wilmington College, Wilmington, OH, 45177, USA

    William S. Helton

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Helton, W.S. Animal expertise, conscious or not. Anim Cogn 8, 67–74 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-004-0234-y

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