Numerical competence in a chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes).

Boysen, Sarah T.; Berntson, Gary G.

doi:10.1037/0735-7036.103.1.23

Cited by 389 publications

(281 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…More importantly for the present work, even in cases which demonstrated amount-based discrimination, the processing limits of such discrimination have not been detailed and systematically compared with number-based discrimination. Where number-based discrimination has been explored, results generally parallel studies with human infants, revealing that a wide variety of non-human animals discriminate between visual-spatial arrays and auditory-temporal sequences on the basis of discrete number, both in studies that involve laboratory training (Boysen and Berntson 1989;Brannon and Terrace 1998;Matsuzawa 1985;Washburn and Rumbaugh 1991) and in studies testing spontaneous, untrained responses (Hauser et al 1996(Hauser et al , 2003Lewis et al 2005;Santos et al 2005). In these cases, specific information has been provided about processing limits.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

When quantity trumps number: discrimination experiments in cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus) and common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus)

2007

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The capacity for non-linguistic, numerical discrimination has been well characterized in non-human animals, with recent studies providing careful controls for nonnumerical confounds such as continuous extent, density, and quantity. More poorly understood are the conditions under which animals use numerical versus nonnumerical quantification, and the nature of the relation between these two systems. Here we test whether cotton-top tamarins and common marmosets can discriminate between two quantities on the basis of the amount of food rather than on number. In three experiments, we show that when choosing between arrays containing different numbers and sizes of food objects, both species based their decisions on the amount of food with only minor influences of numerical information. Further, we find that subjects successfully discriminated between two quantities differing by a 2:3 or greater ratio, which is consistent with the ratio limits found for numerical discrimination with this species. These studies demonstrate that non-human primates possess mechanisms that enable quantification of total amount, in addition to the numerical representations demonstrated in previous studies, with both types of quantification subject to similar processing limits.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

When quantity trumps number: discrimination experiments in cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus) and common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus)

2007

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“…As smart as this chimpanzee was, she was unable to consistently choose the plate with the fewer candies. As it happened, this chimpanzee also had been trained in the use of Arabic numerals to symbolically represent the number of objects in a set (Boysen & Berntson, 1989). That is, she had learned the association between Arabic numerals and the number of objects that each represented.…”

Section: Primatesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The ephemeral reward task: Pigeons and rats fail to learn unless discouraged from impulsive choice.

Zentall¹,

Case²,

Berry³

et al. 2018

AB&C

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-The failure of certain species to learn a particular task while others learn it easily can help identify the learning mechanisms involved. In the ephemeral reward task, animals are given a choice between two distinctive stimuli, A and B, each containing an identical bit of food. If they choose A they get the food on A and the trial is over. If they choose B they get the food on B and they are allowed to get the food on A before the trial is over. Thus, it is optimal to choose B. Although cleaner fish (wrasse) and parrots acquire the optimal response easily, several primate species do not. Furthermore, pigeons and rats also appear to be unable learn to choose optimally. The failure of primates, pigeons, and rats to learn this task and the ease with which cleaner fish and parrots learn it raises important questions about the learning mechanisms involved in those differences. To account for these paradoxical findings, we proposed that certain species may have difficulty with this task because they tend to respond impulsively to the initial choice which has similar immediate outcomes and they do not associate the choice and reinforcement with the second reinforcement. To test this hypothesis, we temporally separated the initial choice from the first reinforcement by imposing a 20-s delay between the choice and its outcome. Under these conditions both pigeons and rats gradually acquired the optimal choice response. We suggest that impulsive choice may make it difficult to acquire certain tasks and imposing a delay between choice and outcome may decrease impulsivity and allow for closer to optimal task performance. Keywords -Ephemeral choice task, Suboptimal choice, Prior commitment, Delay of reinforcementWhen animals fail to acquire what appears to be a relatively simple task, it raises questions that can lead to a better understanding of principles of learning that may apply more generally to other tasks and to other species. Such a task is one we refer to as the ephemeral reward task.Psychologists have been studying the acquisition of relatively simple tasks by animals for over 100 years; from their escape from puzzle boxes (Thorndike, 1898) to simple conditioned reflexes (Pavlov, 1927). More recently the ability to show improvement with the learning in a serial reversal of a simple discrimination has been used as a proxy for the assessment of animal intelligence (Bitterman, 1965). In many cases intuition about animal intelligence has been confirmed with animals deemed to be more like humans doing better on these measures than those that are less like us. Thus, apes tend to show more improvement over reversals than monkeys, monkeys more improvement than rats, rats more improvement than pigeons and so on (Bitterman, 1965(Bitterman, , 1975. But as we will see, this is not always the case.

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“…One of the animals in the study was Sarah, whose analogical capacities have already been described. The three remaining animals had not experienced language training per se, but they did have a history of conditional and numeric token training (Boysen, 1993;Boysen & Berntson, 1989); perhaps importantly, prior to the matching study, they had been trained with symbols for the relations "same" and "different." Specifically, the chimpanzees were rewarded for choosing a heart-shaped symbol presented on a touch screen after being shown a pair of identical objects or their pictorial representations (i.e., if AA, then ♥ = S+); when presented with a pair of nonidentical objects, the chimpanzees were rewarded for choosing a diagonal form on the touch screen (i.e., if QM, then / = S+).…”

Section: Categorical Relational Matching By Nonhuman Primates and Chimentioning

confidence: 99%

Concept Learning in Animals

Zentall¹,

Wasserman²,

Lazareva³

et al. 2008

CCBR

166

141

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Generally speaking, the study of concepts in cognitive psychology is anthropocentric with respect to both content and theory. A broader comparative perspective on the various forms of concept learning not only provides a more inclusive view of conceptual behavior, but it also provides a more objective perspective from which to identify underlying processes. We suggest that several of the major varieties of conceptual classes claimed to be uniquely human are also exhibited by nonhuman animals. We present evidence for the formation of several sorts of conceptual stimulus classes by nonhuman animals: perceptual classes involving classification according to the shared attributes of objects, associative classes or functional equivalences in which stimuli form a class based on common associations, relational classes, in which the conceptual relationship between or among stimuli defines the class, and relations between relations, in which the conceptual (analogical) relationship is defined by the relation between classes of stimuli. We conclude that not only are nonhuman animals capable of acquiring a wide variety of concepts, but that the underlying processes that determine concept learning are also likely to be quite similar.

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Numerical competence in a chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes).

Cited by 389 publications

References 38 publications

When quantity trumps number: discrimination experiments in cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus) and common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus)

When quantity trumps number: discrimination experiments in cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus) and common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus)

The ephemeral reward task: Pigeons and rats fail to learn unless discouraged from impulsive choice.

Concept Learning in Animals

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