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Comparing chimpanzees' preparatory responses to known and unknown future outcomes
Megan L Lambert1, Mathias Osvath2
1Department of Cognitive Science, Lund University, Lund, Sweden megan.lambert@lucs.lu.se.
Biology Letters
|September 28, 2018
Summary
A new study challenges the idea that apes and young children cannot grasp mutually exclusive futures. The task used to test this capacity was found unreliable, suggesting a need for new methods to assess future planning abilities.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Science
- Comparative Psychology
- Primatology
Background:
- Humans plan for the future by considering multiple, distinct possible outcomes.
- A previous study suggested young children and apes lack the capacity to represent mutually exclusive futures.
- This conclusion was based on their failure to cover two tube openings to catch a randomly dropping object.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether apes' failure to cover tube openings was due to an inability to represent mutually exclusive futures or task-related extraneous factors.
- To assess the reliability of the task used in prior research for testing future planning capacities.
Main Methods:
- Replication of a previous study's methods with six chimpanzees.
- Inclusion of a control condition where subjects were expected to cover both tubes, as rewards were guaranteed from both.
- Observation of chimpanzee behavior in covering tube openings under different conditions.
Main Results:
- Even in a straightforward control condition with known outcomes, only four of six chimpanzees consistently covered both tubes.
- Subjects often required extensive trials (minimum 17) to cover both tubes and frequently reverted to covering only one.
- Performance suggests the task is not a valid measure of the ability to represent mutually exclusive futures.
Conclusions:
- The task used by Suddendorf et al. is not a reliable method for testing the capacity to represent mutually exclusive futures in apes.
- Extraneous factors related to the task likely influenced the apes' performance.
- Further research with refined methodologies is needed to accurately assess this cognitive ability in non-human primates.
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