Intuitions about gravity and solidity in great apes: the tubes task.
We investigated whether great apes, like human infants, monkeys and dogs, are subject to a strong gravity bias when tested with the tubes task, and--in case of mastery--what the source of competence on the tubes task is. We presented 22 apes with three versions of the tubes task, in which an object is dropped down a tube connected to one of three potential hiding places and the subject is required to locate the object. In two versions, apes were confronted with a causal tube that varied in the amount of perceptual information it provided (i.e. presence or absence of acoustic cues). The third version was a non-causal adaptation of the task in which a painted line 'connected' dropping and hiding places. Results indicate that apes neither have a reliable gravity bias when tested with the tubes, nor understand the causal function of the tube. Even though there is evidence that they can integrate tube-related causal information to localize the object, they seem to depend mainly on non-causal inferences when searching for an invisibly displaced object.
Department of Psychology, Cognitive and Developmental Psychology, University of Zürich, Switzerland. t.cacchione@psychologie.uzh.ch
Trix
T
Cacchione
Josep
J
Call
D000818:Animals; D002755:Choice Behavior; D003071:Cognition; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006071:Gorilla gorilla / Q000523:psychology*; D006112:Gravitation; D006244:Hardness; D019545:Intuition; D019974:Pan paniscus / Q000523:psychology*; D011148:Pongo pygmaeus / Q000523:psychology*