Do chimpanzees reason logically?

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 experimen...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inChild development Vol. 94; no. 5; pp. 1102 - 1116
Main Authors Engelmann, Jan M., Haux, Lou M., Völter, Christoph, Schleihauf, Hanna, Call, Josep, Rakoczy, Hannes, Herrmann, Esther
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Ann Arbor Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.09.2023
Subjects
Conceptual development
Deductive reasoning
Infants
Logical Thinking
Primates
Theorists
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary: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.
Bibliography:Hannes Rakoczy and Esther Herrmann shared last authorship.
ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 14
content type line 23
ISSN:0009-3920
1467-8624
1467-8624
DOI:10.1111/cdev.13861