The role of socio-communicative rearing environments in the development of social and physical cognition in apes

Abstract

The cultural intelligence hypothesis (CIH) claims that humans' advanced cognition is a direct result of human culture and that children are uniquely specialized to absorb and utilize this cultural experience (Tomasello, 2000). Comparative data demonstrating that 2.5 year old human children outperform apes on measures of social cognition but not on measures of physical cognition support this claim (E. Herrmann, J. Call, M. V. Hernandez-Lloreda, B. Hare, & M. Tomasello, 2007). However, the previous study failed to control for rearing when comparing these two species. Specifically, the human children were raised in a human culture whereas the apes were raised in standard sanctuary settings. To further explore the CIH, here we compared the performance on multiple measures of social and physical cognition in a group of standard reared apes raised in conditions typical of zoo and biomedical laboratory settings to that of apes reared in an enculturated socio-communicatively rich environment. Overall, the enculturated apes significantly outperformed their standard reared counterparts on the cognitive tasks and this was particularly true for measures of communication. Furthermore, the performance of the enculturated apes was very similar to previously reported data from 2.5 year old children. We conclude that apes who are reared in a human-like socio-communicatively rich environment develop superior communicative abilities compared to apes reared in standard laboratory settings, which supports some assumptions of the cultural intelligence hypothesis.

Synaptogenesis and development of pyramidal neuron dendritic morphology in the chimpanzee neocortex resembles humans

“…For example, whereas young chimpanzees do not fully wean until 4-5 y of age and remain closely attached to their mothers during the early years of development, human infants often interact with multiple caregivers and engage in joint attention (59). Experiments with enculturated great apes demonstrate the modulating effect of social environment on cognition; being reared in close human contact in an enriched environment is associated with improved performance on socio-cognitive tasks and tool use (60)(61)(62)(63).…”

Explaining brain size variation: from social to cultural brain

“…An effect of rearing conditions on cognitive performance in different domains (see [55,93], for reviews). An effect of previous cultural experience on the ability to solve specific problems [94,95].…”

The neural and cognitive correlates of aimed throwing in chimpanzees: a magnetic resonance image and behavioural study on a unique form of social tool use

“…Broadly, the tasks assess communication abilities, comprehension of causality, spatial cognition and memory, quantity discrimination and theory of mind. We have recently tested more than 90 chimpanzees on these tasks [40] and, in this study, we compared the performance of throwing and non-throwing apes to examine whether performance differences were evident in these groups.…”