Engelmann Jan M, Haux Lou M, Völter Christoph, Schleihauf Hanna, Call Josep, Rakoczy Hannes, Herrmann Esther
Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California, USA.
Center for Adaptive Rationality, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany.
Child Dev. 2023 Sep-Oct;94(5):1102-1116. doi: 10.1111/cdev.13861. Epub 2022 Oct 18.
Psychologists disagree about the development of logical concepts such as or and not. While some theorists argue that infants reason logically, others maintain that logical inference is contingent on linguistic abilities and emerges around age 4. In this Registered Report, we conducted five experiments on logical reasoning in chimpanzees. Subjects (N = 16; 10 females; M = 24 years) participated in the same setup that has been administered to children: the two-, three-, and four-cup-task. Chimpanzees performed above chance in the two-cup-, but not in the three-cup-task. Furthermore, chimpanzees selected the logically correct option more often in the test than the control condition of the four-cup-task. We discuss possible interpretations of these findings and conclude that our results are most consistent with non-deductive accounts.
心理学家们对于诸如“或”和“非”等逻辑概念的发展存在分歧。一些理论家认为婴儿具有逻辑推理能力,而另一些人则坚持认为逻辑推理取决于语言能力,并且在4岁左右才会出现。在本注册报告中,我们对黑猩猩的逻辑推理进行了五项实验。实验对象(N = 16;10只雌性;平均年龄 = 24岁)参与了与儿童相同的实验设置:两杯任务、三杯任务和四杯任务。黑猩猩在两杯任务中的表现高于随机水平,但在三杯任务中并非如此。此外,在四杯任务的测试中,黑猩猩比在对照条件下更频繁地选择逻辑上正确的选项。我们讨论了这些发现的可能解释,并得出结论,我们的结果与非演绎解释最为一致。