Elsevier

Cognition

Volume 50, Issues 1–3, April–June 1994, Pages 347-362
Cognition

Levels of causal understanding in chimpanzees and children

https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(94)90035-3Get rights and content

Abstract

We compare three levels of causal understanding in chimpanzees and children: (1) causal reasoning, (2) labelling the components (actor, object, and instrument) of a causal sequence, and (3) choosing the correct alternative for an incomplete representation of a causal sequence. We present two tests of causal reasoning, the first requiring chimpanzees to read and use as evidence the emotional state of a conspecific. Despite registering the emotion, they failed to use it as evidence. The second test, comparing children and chimpanzees, required them to infer the location of food eaten by a trainer. Children and, to a lesser extent, chimpanzees succeeded. When given information showing the inference to be unsound - physically impossible - 4-year-old children abandoned the inference but younger children and chimpanzees did not. Children and chimpanzees are both capable of labelling causal sequences and completing incomplete representations of them. The chimpanzee Sarah labelled the components of a causal sequence, and completed incomplete representations of actions involving multiple transformations. We conclude the article with a general discussion of the concept of cause, suggesting that the concept evolved far earlier in the psychological domain than in the physical.

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    Both A and B are possible locations for the target. If participants are shown that A is empty (not A), great apes, monkeys, birds, elephants, and many other nonlinguistic species immediately search in location B (therefore B; e.g., [23–31]). Twenty- and 23-month-old humans, who do not yet grasp the meanings of ‘not’ [32–35], ‘or’ [36,37], ‘possible’, or modal operators, such as ‘could’, ‘might,’ ‘must’, or ‘have to’ [38,39] also pass this task [34,40].

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The data reported here were collected at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of Pennsylvania Primate Facility. We are greatly indebted to Guy Woodruff, who participated in all phases of the research and would be a co-author if we knew his whereabouts and could obtain his permission. We are also indebted to the many students, graduate and undergraduate, at both institutions who assisted in the care and testing of the chimpanzees.

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