title: Do animals understand invisible displacement? A critical review.
abstract: The ability to mentally represent the movement of hidden objects (i.e., invisible displacement) is of theoretical importance due to its generally accepted status as an indicator of the development of a powerful type of representational capacity in human children. Over the past few decades, the understanding of invisible displacement has been claimed for a variety of animal species as well. However, a careful review of these studies finds that: (a) many were not properly blinded, (b) many did not properly control for lower-level associative strategies, and (c) success on simplified versions of the tasks can be explained by a simple attentional mechanism rather than by conceptual understanding. Indeed, when lower-level factors are controlled, evidence of understanding invisible displacement remains only for great apes.
authors.affiliation: Research Department, Dolphin Research Center.
authors.forename: Kelly
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Jaakkola
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001717:Birds / Q000502:physiology*; D032882:Comprehension / Q000502:physiology*; D015186:Hominidae / Q000502:physiology*; D008322:Mammals / Q000502:physiology*; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D013850:Thinking / Q000502:physiology*