How can I find what I want? Can children, chimpanzees and capuchin monkeys form abstract representations to guide their behavior in a sampling task?
Abstract
Abstract concepts are a powerful tool for making wide-ranging predictions in new situations based on little experience. Whereas looking-time studies suggest an early emergence of this ability in human infancy, other paradigms like the relational match to sample task often fail to detect abstract concepts until late preschool years. Similarly, non-human animals show difficulties and often succeed only after long training regimes. Given the considerable influence of slight task modifications, the conclusiveness of these findings for the development and phylogenetic distribution of abstract reasoning is debated. Here, we tested the abilities of 3 to 5-year-old children, chimpanzees, and capuchin monkeys in a unified and more ecologically valid task design based on the concept of “overhypotheses” (Goodman, 1955). Participants sampled high- and low-valued items from containers that either each offered items of uniform value or a mix of high- and low-valued items. In a test situation, participants should switch away earlier from a container offering low-valued items when they learned that, in general, items within a container are of the same type, but should stay longer if they formed the overhypothesis that containers bear a mix of types. We compared each species' performance to the predictions of a probabilistic hierarchical Bayesian model forming overhypotheses at a first and second level of abstraction, adapted to each species' reward preferences. Children and, to a more limited extent, chimpanzees demonstrated their sensitivity to abstract patterns in the evidence. In contrast, capuchin monkeys did not exhibit conclusive evidence for the ability of abstract knowledge formation.
Citation
Felsche , E , Völter , C J , Herrmann , E , Seed , A M & Buchsbaum , D 2024 , ' How can I find what I want? Can children, chimpanzees and capuchin monkeys form abstract representations to guide their behavior in a sampling task? ' , Cognition , vol. 245 , 105721 . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105721
Publication
Cognition
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0010-0277Type
Journal article
Description
Authors are grateful to the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS) and the University of St Andrews for core financial support to the RZSS Edinburgh Zoo’s Living Links Research Centre, where this project was carried out. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. [639072]). We acknowledge the support of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) [funding reference number 2016-05552].Collections
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