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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 June 2023
Among cognitive ethologists, communication is widely supposed to be a good area for comparing animal minds (e.g., Cheney & Seyfarth 1990; Griffin 1991, and other contributions to Ristau 1991). There is, however, considerable controversy about how to define or characterize communication. We will not survey these attempts in this paper (see Philips & Austad 1990). Rather, we focus on conceptions of communication as transfer of informationfrom signaler to receiver. In conjunction with descriptions of human cognition in information processing terms, this conception encourages the idea that communication provides a “window” on animal thoughts’ (Griffin 1991, p.3). The first step in getting beyond this metaphor is to identify possible relationships between information and cognition. This paper attempts that first step.