You are here:
  1. PHAIDRA
  2. Detail o:4265
Open in new window
Title (eng)
How can I find what I want? Can children, chimpanzees and capuchin monkeys form abstract representations to guide their behavior in a sampling task?
Author
Elisa Felsche
Author
Christoph J Völter
Author
Esther Herrmann
Author
Amanda M Seed
Author
Daphna Buchsbaum
Abstract (eng)
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.
Keywords (eng)
Hierarchical Visual - StimuliHumans Homo - SapiensPan - TroglodytesProbabilistic InferenceYoung - ChildrenInfantsAnalogyCognitionJudgementsMatch
Type (eng)
journal article
Language
[eng]
Persistent identifier
https://phaidra.vetmeduni.ac.at/o:4265
DOI
10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105721
Is in series
Title (eng)
Cognition
Volume
245
ISSN
1873-7838
Issued
2024
Number of pages
8
Publication
Elsevier
Version type (eng)
version of record (published version)
Date issued
2024
Access rights (eng)
open access
License
CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International
Rights statement (eng)
Copyright © 2024 The Authors