title: Do chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) understand single invisible displacement?
abstract: Previous research suggests that chimpanzees understand single invisible displacement. However, this Piagetian task may be solvable through the use of simple search strategies rather than through mentally representing the past trajectory of an object. Four control conditions were thus administered to two chimpanzees in order to separate associative search strategies from performance based on mental representation. Strategies involving experimenter cue-use, search at the last or first box visited by the displacement device, and search at boxes adjacent to the displacement device were systematically controlled for. Chimpanzees showed no indications of utilizing these simple strategies, suggesting that their capacity to mentally represent single invisible displacements is comparable to that of 18-24-month-old children.
authors.affiliation: Early Cognitive Development Unit, School of Psychology, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia. e.collier-baker@psy.uq.edu.au
authors.forename: Emma
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Collier-Baker
authors.forename: Joanne M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Davis
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Nielsen
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Suddendorf
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D003071:Cognition; D008297:Male; D002679:Pan troglodytes / Q000523:psychology*; D013028:Space Perception; D013037:Spatial Behavior; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D014796:Visual Perception