Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Cognitive enrichment for captive animals is the idea that cog-nitive stimulation can improve animal welfare. In zoos, cog-nitive enrichment not only helps the animals themselves butalso contributes to zoo missions of educating the public, sup-porting research, and more. Technology-based cognitive en-richment tools are increasingly popular for a variety of rea-sons, though they also present unique challenges for designand deployment. In this paper, we present a short review oftechnology-based cognitive enrichment programs in zoo set-tings, and then describe the design and development processwe used to create a new, touchscreen-based enrichment appfor a group of orangutans at Zoo Atlanta. We discuss initialobservations about the orangutans’ use of this app, as well aslessons learned by our research team.