Similarity and Difference in the Conceptual Systems of Primates: The Unobservability Hypothesis

Vonk, Jennifer; Povinelli, Daniel J.

doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195377804.003.0020

Cited by 42 publications

(72 citation statements)

References 91 publications

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“…This characterization captures and extends to other domains what Povinelli and co-workers, e.g. [17], have long discussed as the absence of evidence in animals for an understanding of the world in terms of unseen physical or social forces such as gravity or belief. Following Karmiloff-Smith [18], Penn et al [2] termed the process underlying it as relational reinterpretation.…”

Section: Domain-general Theoriessupporting

confidence: 64%

Modularity, comparative cognition and human uniqueness

Shettleworth

2012

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Darwin's claim 'that the difference in mind between man and the higher animals . . . is certainly one of degree and not of kind' is at the core of the comparative study of cognition. Recent research provides unprecedented support for Darwin's claim as well as new reasons to question it, stimulating new theories of human cognitive uniqueness. This article compares and evaluates approaches to such theories. Some prominent theories propose sweeping domain-general characterizations of the difference in cognitive capabilities and/or mechanisms between adult humans and other animals. Dual-process theories for some cognitive domains propose that adult human cognition shares simple basic processes with that of other animals while additionally including slowerdeveloping and more explicit uniquely human processes. These theories are consistent with a modular account of cognition and the 'core knowledge' account of children's cognitive development. A complementary proposal is that human infants have unique social and/or cognitive adaptations for uniquely human learning. A view of human cognitive architecture as a mosaic of unique and species-general modular and domain-general processes together with a focus on uniquely human developmental mechanisms is consistent with modern evolutionary-developmental biology and suggests new questions for comparative research.

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Section: Domain-general Theoriessupporting

confidence: 64%

Modularity, comparative cognition and human uniqueness

Shettleworth

2012

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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“…As described in the Introduction, success in these tasks is possible only when the subject attends to the relation between items (e.g., whether two items are the same or different). The subject must transfer the learned relations between familiar items to novel ones during testing (30)(31)(32)(33), comparable to the requirements for success in our artificial grammar learning task. The ability to perform such a relational match-to-sample task long was thought to be unique for humans; it also has been demonstrated in some great ape species (30) and recently has been demonstrated in crows and amazon parrots (32, 33, but also see ref.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Next they are tested with pairs of novel items that do not share a physical resemblance with the training stimuli, but do share the same underlying structure, such as CC or CD. Such a task thus requires the matching of relations between relations (29)(30)(31)(32)(33). Similarly, learning to identify correct sequences of novel auditory items, such as an XYX or XXY structure, requires that the animal first detects that the relation between the X and Y items differs in the XYX and XXY samples and next abstracts this relation to novel samples.…”

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confidence: 99%

Budgerigars and zebra finches differ in how they generalize in an artificial grammar learning experiment

Spierings

Cate

2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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The ability to abstract a regularity that underlies strings of sounds is a core mechanism of the language faculty but might not be specific to language learning or even to humans. It is unclear whether and to what extent nonhuman animals possess the ability to abstract regularities defining the relation among arbitrary auditory items in a string and to generalize this abstraction to strings of acoustically novel items. In this study we tested these abilities in a songbird (zebra finch) and a parrot species (budgerigar). Subjects were trained in a go/no-go design to discriminate between two sets of sound strings arranged in an XYX or an XXY structure. After this discrimination was acquired, each subject was tested with test strings that were structurally identical to the training strings but consisted of either new combinations of known elements or of novel elements belonging to other element categories. Both species learned to discriminate between the two stimulus sets. However, their responses to the test strings were strikingly different. Zebra finches categorized test stimuli with previously heard elements by the ordinal position that these elements occupied in the training strings, independent of string structure. In contrast, the budgerigars categorized both novel combinations of familiar elements as well as strings consisting of novel element types by their underlying structure. They thus abstracted the relation among items in the XYX and XXY structures, an ability similar to that shown by human infants and indicating a level of abstraction comparable to analogical reasoning.artificial grammar learning | rule learning | auditory perception | songbirds | parrots O ne of the critical features of language learning is the ability to abstract the grammatical structure from spoken language. Such abstraction allows humans to learn about regularities in their native language and to generalize these regularities to novel input. This ability is examined in a standardized way in artificial grammar learning experiments, in which humans are exposed to strings of meaningless sounds (e.g., arbitrary speech syllables) organized according to a specific grammatical structure. Several studies have shown that the ability to abstract the underlying structure from such stimuli is present in young infants (1-5) in both the acoustic and the visual domain (6-8). This domain generality and its presence at a very early age have given rise to the notion that this cognitive ability may have preceded language evolution and served as a basis for present-day linguistic complexity. If so, it raises the question to what extent this ability is confined to humans or also can be found in nonhuman animals. In this context, comparative studies on nonhuman animals are needed to reveal the level of abstraction they are able to achieve in artificial grammar learning tasks. This information might provide hypotheses about how and why the more complex human grammatical competences have arisen. The current study addresses whether two bird species, the...

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“…Natural categories may be inferred from perceptual and functional attributes that are necessary, sufficient, and perhaps prototypical for a member of that category. A deep literature grounded in cognitive, comparative, and developmental psychology has established that categories vary to the extent that they are tied to singular perceptual features or abstracted from patterns of features, functions, and attributes (Fize, Cauchoix, & Fabre-Thorpe, 2011;Gelman & Medin, 1993;Herrnstein, 1990;Mervis & Rosch, 1981;Roberts & Mazmanian, 1988; Rosch, Mervis, Gray, Johnson, & Boyes-Braem, 1976;Vonk & MacDonald, 2002, 2004Vonk & Povinelli, 2012; Zentall, Wasserman, Lazareva, Thompson, & Ratterman, 2008). To the extent that categories vary in inclusiveness, they will vary in the degree of abstraction that is required to identify category membership.…”

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confidence: 99%

Natural category discrimination in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) at three levels of abstraction

et al. 2013

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Two adult chimpanzees were presented with a series of natural category discrimination tasks on a touch screen computer, in which the discriminations varied in degree of abstraction. At the concrete level, discriminations could be made on the basis of single perceptual features, but at the more abstract level, categories were more inclusive, containing exemplars with variant perceptual features. For instance, at the most abstract level, the chimpanzees were required to select images of animals rather than nonanimals, and exemplars within both categories were perceptually diverse. One chimpanzee showed positive transfer at each level of abstraction but required more sessions to reach criterion as the discriminations became more abstract. The other chimpanzee failed to demonstrate consistent significant acquisition of a concept. The results indicate that unlike other apes and black bears, tested previously, chimpanzees found the most abstract discriminations the most difficult to acquire. Analyses of the features of pictures that yielded high or low accuracy revealed no significant differences on several key features, suggesting that the presence of facial features, eyes, or specific coloration did not control responding. In addition, the chimpanzees performed more accurately with photos judged as less typical exemplars of the category by human raters. However, responses to pictures of particular species suggest that chimpanzees may rely on perceptual similarity to familiar exemplars when acquiring experimenter-defined natural categories.Keywords Chimpanzees . Concept formation . Levels of abstraction . Natural categoriesThe formation of natural categories is critical to survival for species faced with challenges such as distinguishing food items from nonpalatable objects and prey from predators. Given the fundamental importance of natural concepts in determining the appropriate response to novel objects, it is expected that most animal species would form natural categories, despite their notoriously fuzzy boundaries (Malt, 1993;McCloskey & Glucksberg, 1978). Natural categories may be inferred from perceptual and functional attributes that are necessary, sufficient, and perhaps prototypical for a member of that category. A deep literature grounded in cognitive, comparative, and developmental psychology has established that categories vary to the extent that they are tied to singular perceptual features or abstracted from patterns of features, functions, and attributes (Fize, Cauchoix, & Fabre-Thorpe, 2011;Gelman & Medin, 1993;Herrnstein, 1990;Mervis & Rosch, 1981;Roberts & Mazmanian, 1988; Rosch, Mervis, Gray, Johnson, & Boyes-Braem, 1976;Vonk & MacDonald, 2002, 2004Vonk & Povinelli, 2012; Zentall, Wasserman, Lazareva, Thompson, & Ratterman, 2008). To the extent that categories vary in inclusiveness, they will vary in the degree of abstraction that is required to identify category membership. For instance, a concrete-level category may include members of only a particular species, whose physical features...

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Similarity and Difference in the Conceptual Systems of Primates: The Unobservability Hypothesis

Cited by 42 publications

References 91 publications

Modularity, comparative cognition and human uniqueness

Modularity, comparative cognition and human uniqueness

Budgerigars and zebra finches differ in how they generalize in an artificial grammar learning experiment

Natural category discrimination in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) at three levels of abstraction

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