Biopsychology and Behavioral Neuroscience Program, The Graduate Center, The City University of New York, New York, New York, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2011;6(8):e23251. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0023251. Epub 2011 Aug 18.
The "aha" moment or the sudden arrival of the solution to a problem is a common human experience. Spontaneous problem solving without evident trial and error behavior in humans and other animals has been referred to as insight. Surprisingly, elephants, thought to be highly intelligent, have failed to exhibit insightful problem solving in previous cognitive studies. We tested whether three Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) would use sticks or other objects to obtain food items placed out-of-reach and overhead. Without prior trial and error behavior, a 7-year-old male Asian elephant showed spontaneous problem solving by moving a large plastic cube, on which he then stood, to acquire the food. In further testing he showed behavioral flexibility, using this technique to reach other items and retrieving the cube from various locations to use as a tool to acquire food. In the cube's absence, he generalized this tool utilization technique to other objects and, when given smaller objects, stacked them in an attempt to reach the food. The elephant's overall behavior was consistent with the definition of insightful problem solving. Previous failures to demonstrate this ability in elephants may have resulted not from a lack of cognitive ability but from the presentation of tasks requiring trunk-held sticks as potential tools, thereby interfering with the trunk's use as a sensory organ to locate the targeted food.
“顿悟”时刻，或者说问题解决方案的突然出现，是人类常见的体验。人类和其他动物在没有明显试错行为的情况下自发解决问题，这种现象被称为顿悟。令人惊讶的是，在之前的认知研究中，被认为具有高度智慧的大象未能表现出具有洞察力的问题解决能力。我们测试了三只亚洲象（Elephas maximus）是否会使用棍棒或其他物体来获取放在够不着和头顶上的食物。在没有事先试错行为的情况下，一只 7 岁的雄性亚洲象通过移动一个大的塑料方块来获得食物，从而表现出自发解决问题的能力。在进一步的测试中，他表现出了行为灵活性，使用这种技术来获取其他物品，并从不同位置取回方块作为工具来获取食物。在没有方块的情况下，他将这种工具使用技术推广到其他物体上，当给他更小的物体时，他会将它们堆叠起来，试图够到食物。大象的整体行为符合顿悟问题解决的定义。之前在大象身上未能展示这种能力的原因可能不是认知能力的缺乏，而是因为任务要求使用象鼻持有的棍棒作为潜在工具，从而干扰了象鼻作为感官器官来定位目标食物的使用。
