Information seeking about tool properties in great apes
Abstract
Evidence suggests that great apes engage in metacognitive information seeking for food items. To support the claim that a domain-general cognitive process underlies ape metacognition one needs to show that selective information seeking extends to non-food items. In this study, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and orangutans (Pongo abelii) either had to determine the location of a desired food item or a property of a non-food item (length of a tool). We manipulated whether subjects received prior information about the item’s location or property. During the test, subjects had the opportunity to seek the respective information. Results show that apes engaged in more information seeking when they had no prior knowledge. Importantly, this selective pattern of information seeking applied to food as well as to tools.
Citation
Bohn , M , Allritz , M , Call , J & Voelter , C J 2017 , ' Information seeking about tool properties in great apes ' , Scientific Reports , vol. 7 , 10923 . https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-11400-z
Publication
Scientific Reports
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
2045-2322Type
Journal article
Description
M.B. was supported by a scholarship of the German National Academic Foundation. J.C. was supported by the “SOMICS” ERC Synergy grant (nr. 609819).Collections
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