Horner Victoria, Whiten Andrew
Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution, School of Psychology, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, KY16 9JU, UK.
Anim Cogn. 2005 Jul;8(3):164-81. doi: 10.1007/s10071-004-0239-6. Epub 2004 Nov 11.
This study explored whether the tendency of chimpanzees and children to use emulation or imitation to solve a tool-using task was a response to the availability of causal information. Young wild-born chimpanzees from an African sanctuary and 3- to 4-year-old children observed a human demonstrator use a tool to retrieve a reward from a puzzle-box. The demonstration involved both causally relevant and irrelevant actions, and the box was presented in each of two conditions: opaque and clear. In the opaque condition, causal information about the effect of the tool inside the box was not available, and hence it was impossible to differentiate between the relevant and irrelevant parts of the demonstration. However, in the clear condition causal information was available, and subjects could potentially determine which actions were necessary. When chimpanzees were presented with the opaque box, they reproduced both the relevant and irrelevant actions, thus imitating the overall structure of the task. When the box was presented in the clear condition they instead ignored the irrelevant actions in favour of a more efficient, emulative technique. These results suggest that emulation is the favoured strategy of chimpanzees when sufficient causal information is available. However, if such information is not available, chimpanzees are prone to employ a more comprehensive copy of an observed action. In contrast to the chimpanzees, children employed imitation to solve the task in both conditions, at the expense of efficiency. We suggest that the difference in performance of chimpanzees and children may be due to a greater susceptibility of children to cultural conventions, perhaps combined with a differential focus on the results, actions and goals of the demonstrator.
本研究探讨了黑猩猩和儿童倾向于使用效仿还是模仿来解决工具使用任务，是否是对因果信息可得性的一种反应。来自非洲一个庇护所的野生幼年黑猩猩和3至4岁的儿童观察了一名人类示范者使用工具从一个拼图盒中获取奖励。示范过程包括因果相关和不相关的动作，并且盒子以两种条件呈现：不透明和透明。在不透明条件下，关于盒子内部工具效果的因果信息不可得，因此无法区分示范中的相关和不相关部分。然而，在透明条件下因果信息可得，受试者有可能确定哪些动作是必要的。当给黑猩猩呈现不透明盒子时，它们重现了相关和不相关的动作，从而模仿了任务的整体结构。当盒子以透明条件呈现时，它们反而忽略了不相关的动作，转而采用更高效的效仿技巧。这些结果表明，当有足够的因果信息时，效仿是黑猩猩偏好的策略。然而，如果没有这样的信息，黑猩猩倾向于更全面地复制观察到的动作。与黑猩猩不同，儿童在两种条件下都采用模仿来解决任务，而牺牲了效率。我们认为，黑猩猩和儿童表现的差异可能是由于儿童更容易受到文化习俗的影响，也许还与对示范者的结果、动作和目标的不同关注有关。
