Plant Cognition—A Methodological Primer: Theories, Methods and Challenges

ABSTRACT Part I: What counts as cognition, and how can it be studied in organisms without nervous systems? The emerging field of plant cognition confronts these questions by integrating philosophy, plant science and comparative psychology. This article provides a methodological primer on the field. We first survey major theoretical approaches—computationalist and representationalist, radical embodied, and behaviour‐first—and consider how they might be integrated. We then examine methodological strategies, from comparative experimental paradigms to the role of philosophy in clarifying concepts and guiding research design. Finally, we address key epistemic challenges, including replicability, anthropomorphism and confirmation bias. Taken together, these discussions establish a conceptual and methodological foundation for plant cognition research. A companion article, Plant Cognition—An Empirical Primer, complements this survey by reviewing the empirical evidence and its philosophical implications.