Bohn Manuel, Call Josep, Tomasello Michael
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany.
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany; University of St Andrews, United Kingdom.
Cognition. 2015 Dec;145:63-72. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2015.08.009. Epub 2015 Aug 28.
There is currently debate about the extent to which non-linguistic beings such as human infants and great apes are capable of absent reference. In a series of experiments we investigated the flexibility and specificity of great apes' (N=36) and 12 month-old infants' (N=40) requests for absent entities. Subjects had the choice between requesting visible objects directly and using the former location of a depleted option to request more of these now-absent entities. Importantly, we systematically varied the quality of the present and absent options. We found that great apes as well as human infants flexibly adjusted their requests for absent entities to these contextual variations and only requested absent entities when the visible option was of lower quality than the absent option. These results suggest that the most basic cognitive capacities for absent reference do not depend on language and are shared by humans and their closest living relatives.
目前，关于人类婴儿和大猩猩等非语言生物能够进行缺席指称的程度存在争议。在一系列实验中，我们研究了大猩猩（N = 36）和12个月大婴儿（N = 40）对缺席实体请求的灵活性和特异性。受试者可以选择直接请求可见物体，也可以使用已耗尽选项的先前位置来请求更多这些现在缺席的实体。重要的是，我们系统地改变了当前和缺席选项的质量。我们发现，大猩猩和人类婴儿会根据这些情境变化灵活调整对缺席实体的请求，并且只有当可见选项的质量低于缺席选项时才会请求缺席实体。这些结果表明，进行缺席指称的最基本认知能力不依赖于语言，人类及其现存的近亲都具备。
