Erratum to: Understanding of and reasoning about object–object relationships in long‐tailed macaques? (original) (raw)
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Understanding of and reasoning about object–object relationships in long-tailed macaques?
Animal Cognition, 2013
Diagnostic reasoning, defined as the ability to infer unobserved causes based on the observation of their effects, is a central cognitive competency of humans. Yet, little is known about diagnostic reasoning in non-human primates, and what we know is largely restricted to the Great Apes. To track the evolutionary history of these skills within primates, we investigated long-tailed macaques' understanding of the significance of inclinations of covers of hidden food as diagnostic indicators for the presence of an object located underneath. Subjects were confronted with choices between different objects that might cover food items. Based on their physical characteristics, the shape and orientation of the covers did or did not reveal the location of a hidden reward. For instance, hiding the reward under a solid board led to its inclination, whereas a hollow cup remained unaltered. Thus, the type of cover and the occurrence or absence of a change in their appearance could potentially be used to reason diagnostically about the location of the reward. In several experiments, the macaques were confronted with a varying number of covers and their performance was dependent on the level of complexity and on the type of change of the covers' orientation. The macaques could use a board's inclination to detect the reward, but failed to do so if the lack of inclination was indicative of an alternative hiding place. We suggest that the monkeys' performance is based on a rudimentary understanding of causality, but find no good evidence for sophisticated diagnostic reasoning in this particular domain.
Inferences about the location of food in capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) in two sensory modalities
Journal of Comparative Psychology, 2008
The authors tested the ability of capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) to make inferences about hidden food. In Experiment 1, we showed the content of 2 boxes, 1 of which was baited (visual condition, VC) or we shook both boxes producing noise from the baited box (auditory condition, AC). Seven subjects (out of 8) were above chance in the VC, whereas only 1 was above chance in AC. During treatment, by manipulating empty and filled objects subjects experienced the relation between noise and content. When tested again, 7 capuchins were above chance in the VC and 3 in AC. In Experiment 2, we gave visual or auditory information only about the empty box and, consequently, successful choice implied inferential reasoning. All subjects (out of 4) were above chance in the VC, and 2 in the AC. Control tests ruled out the possibility that success resulted from simply avoiding the shaken noiseless box, or from the use of arbitrary auditory information. Similar to apes , capuchins were capable of inferential reasoning.
Animal cognition, 2015
Many animal species use a variety of cognitive strategies to locate food resources. One strategy is to make inferences by exclusion, i.e., perceiving the absence of reward as a cue that another location should be investigated. The use of such advanced cognitive strategies may be more prominent in species that are known to frequently solve social challenges, and inferential reasoning has mainly been investigated in social species such as corvids, dogs, dolphins and non-human primates. In this paper, we investigate how far social intricacy may explain the disparity of reasoning performances observed in three cercopithecine species that differ in the density of their social network and the diversity of their social partners. We used standard reasoning tasks, testing the volume concept and inference by exclusion using visual and auditory modalities. We showed that Old World monkeys can infer the location of invisible food by exclusion. In addition, Tonkean macaques and olive baboons had...
Chimpanzee problem-solving: contrasting the use of causal and arbitrary cues
Animal Cognition, 2011
Humans are able to beneWt from a causally structured problem-solving context rather than arbitrarily structured situations. In order to better understand nonhuman causal cognition, it is therefore important to isolate crucial factors that might diVerentiate between events that follow a purely spatial and temporal contingency and those that hold a "true" causal relationship. In the Wrst of two experiments, chimpanzee subjects were required to detect a bottle containing juice from Wve opaque bottles of equal shape and size. In the causal condition, the juice bottle looked identical to the other four bottles, only it was much heavier than the others. In the arbitrary condition, the weight of all Wve bottles was identical, but the juice bottle was color-marked diVerently. Since bottle opening was made diYcult (and therefore costly), the question was whether subject's manipulative behavior would be random or somehow inXuenced by the nature of the provided information. Our results show that subjects detected and opened the juice bottle signiWcantly faster when weight was the discriminating feature (causal condition) compared to situations in which the discrimination was necessarily based on a color-cue (arbitrary condition). Experiment 2 ruled out the possibility of a general learning bias toward tactile rather than visual information in chimpanzees. When tested in a simple exchange paradigm that prevented any use of causal information, no predominance of a tactile cue (weight) over a visual cue (color) could be found. Furthermore-and in contrast to the causal condition in Experiment 1-no learning occurred during the course of Experiment 2, neither in the weight nor in the color condition. We therefore conclude that chimpanzees can more easily determine the content of an object based on its causal properties compared to situations in which the only available information is a pure arbitrary regularity. This supports the view that chimpanzees' causal cognition does not rely on mere perceptual information but also on structural abstraction about their physical environment.
Primate causal understanding in the physical and psychological domains
Behavioural Processes, 1998
Evidence for primates' understanding of causality is presented and discussed. Understanding causality requires the organism to understand not just that two events are associated with one another in space and time, but also that there is some 'mediating force' that binds the two events to one another which may be used to predict or control those events (e.g. a physical force such as gravity or a psychological force such as an intention). In the physical domain, studies of tool use indicate that capuchin monkeys do not have a causal understanding of the functioning of tools in terms of the physical forces involved, but rather they learn to associate aspects of their own behavior with the results it produces. Apes show some possible signs of understanding the causal relations involved in tool use in the sense that they may employ various forms of foresight in approaching novel tasks, perhaps involving an understanding of physical forces-although not to the extent of human children. In the psychological domain, nonhuman primates understand conspecifics as animate beings that generate their own behavior and, thus, they appreciate that to manipulate conspecifics communicative signals, and not physical activities, are required. However, there is very little evidence that nonhuman primates of any species understand others as psychological beings with intentions and other psychological states that mediate their behavioral interactions with the world -as human children begin to do sometime during their second year of life. More research, using a wider range of problem-solving situations, is needed if we are to become more precise in our understanding of how primates understand the causal structure of the world around them.
Problem solving and logical reasoning in the macaque monkey
Behavioural Brain Research, 1996
This study focuses on the performances of monkeys in a spatial problem-solving task that involves working memory. Two monkeys had to find, by trial-and-error, the touching order of 2 or 3 targets in a set of 3 or 4 fixed spatial targets. When a solution was found and performed 6 times, the order was changed and the animal had to resume a new search within the same set of targets. Thus, in a training session, many searches (up to 60) could be initialised. The data show that the animals conducted a methodical search for the hidden order and found the solution in a minimal number of trials. We conclude that the monkey is able to construct complex cognitive structures, similar to logical reasoning, to solve spatial problems of this type.
The plight of the sense-making ape (2014) PREPRINT
2014
This is a selective review of the published literature on object-choice tasks, where participants use directional cues to find hidden objects. This literature comprises the efforts of researchers to make sense of the sense-making capacities of our nearest living relatives. This chapter is written to highlight some nonsensical conclusions that frequently emerge from this research. The data suggest that when apes are given approximately the same sense-making opportunities as we provide our children, then they will easily make sense of our social signals. The ubiquity of nonsensical contemporary scientific claims to the effect that humans are essentially--or inherently--more capable than other great apes in the understanding of simple directional cues is, itself, a testament to the power of preconceived ideas on human perception.
1997
As the cognitive revolution was slow to come to the study of animal behavior, the vast majority of what we know about primate cognition has been discovered in the last 30 years. Building on the recognition that the physical and social worlds of humans and their living primate relatives pose many of the same evolutionary challenges, programs of research have established that the most basic cognitive skills and mental representations that humans use to navigate those worlds are already possessed by other primates. There may be differences between humans and other primates, however, in more complex cognitive skills, such as reasoning about relations, causality, time, and other minds. Of special importance, the human primate seems to possess a species-unique set of adaptations for ''cultural intelligence,'' which are broad reaching in their effects on human cognition.
The ability of four tufted capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) to recognize the causal connection between seeing and knowing was investigated. The subjects were trained to follow a suggestion about the location of hidden food provided by a trainer who knew where the food was (the knower) in preference to a trainer who did not (the guesser). The experimenter baited one of three opaque containers behind a cardboard screen so that the subjects could not see which of the containers hid the reward. In experiment 1, the knower appeared first in front of the apparatus and looked into each container; next, the guesser appeared but did not look into any containers. Then the knower touched the correct cup while the guesser touched one of the three randomly. The capuchin monkeys gradually learned to reach toward the cup that the knower suggested. In experiment 2, the subjects adapted to a novel variant of the task, in which the guesser touched but did not look into any of the containers. In experiment 3, the monkeys adapted again when the knower and the guesser appeared in a random order. These results suggest that capuchin monkeys can learn to recognize the relationship between seeing and knowing.