Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.
Am J Primatol. 2010 Apr;72(4):349-59. doi: 10.1002/ajp.20790.
Eight chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), five bonobos (Pan paniscus), five gorillas (Gorilla gorilla), and seven orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) were presented with two invisible object displacement tasks. In full view of the subject, a food item was hidden under one of three opaque cups resting on a platform and, after an experimental manipulation, the subject was allowed to select one of the cups. In the rotation task, the platform was rotated 180 degrees while the subject remained stationary. In the translocation task, the platform remained stationary while the subject walked to the opposite side from where she saw the reward being hidden. The final position of the food relative to the subject was equivalent in both tasks. Single displacement trials consisted of only one manipulation, either a rotation or a translocation, whereas double displacement trials consisted of both a rotation and a translocation. We also included no displacement trials in which no displacements took place. No displacement trials were easier than single displacements which, in turn, were easier than double displacements. Unlike earlier studies with children, there was no difference in performance between rotation and translocation displacements. Overall, apes performed above chance in all conditions, but chimpanzees outperformed the other species. This study reinforces the notion that the great apes use an allocentric spatial coding.
八只黑猩猩（Pan troglodytes）、五只倭黑猩猩（Pan paniscus）、五只大猩猩（Gorilla gorilla）和七只猩猩（Pongo pygmaeus）被呈现了两个不可见物体位移任务。在主体的完全视野下，一个食物物品被隐藏在三个放在平台上的不透明杯子之一下，在实验操作之后，主体被允许选择其中一个杯子。在旋转任务中，平台旋转 180 度，而主体保持静止。在平移任务中，平台保持静止，而主体走到她看到奖励被隐藏的相反一侧。食物相对于主体的最终位置在两个任务中是等效的。单次位移试验仅由一次操作组成，要么是旋转，要么是平移，而双次位移试验由旋转和平移组成。我们还包括没有发生位移的无位移试验。无位移试验比单次位移更容易，而单次位移又比双次位移更容易。与早期对儿童的研究不同，旋转和平移位移之间的表现没有差异。总体而言，猿类在所有条件下的表现都超过了随机水平，但黑猩猩的表现优于其他物种。这项研究强化了一个观点，即大型猿类使用了一种以客体为中心的空间编码。
