ABSTRACT
Explanations of animal problem-solving often represent our choices as limited to two: first, we can explain the observed behavior as a product of trained responses to sensory stimuli, or second, we can explain it as due to the animal’s possession of general rules utilizing general concepts. My objective in this essay is to bring to life a third alternative, namely, an explanation in terms of imagistic cognition. The theory of imagistic cognition posits representations that locate objects in a multidimensional similarity space. It proposes that an animal’s expectations can be explained on the basis of the similarity of novel objects to objects previously encountered. The animal can predict the behavior of the novel object by producing a mental movie of the novel object by morphing it into an object, the behavior of which has previously been observed.
