Journal article
Discriminating the Relation Between Relations: The Role of Entropy in Abstract Conceptualization by Baboons (Papio papio) and Humans (Homo sapiens)
Journal of experimental psychology. Animal behavior processes, Vol.27(4), pp.316-328
10/2001
DOI: 10.1037/0097-7403.27.4.316
Abstract
Two baboons (Papio papio) successfully learned relational matching-to-sample: They picked the choice display that involved the same relation among 16 pictures (same or different) as the sample display, although the sample display shared no pictures with the choice displays. The baboons generalized relational matching behavior to sample displays created from novel pictures. Further experiments varying the number of sample pictures and the mixture of same and different sample pictures suggested that entropy plays a key role in the baboons' conceptual behavior. Two humans (Homo sapiens) were similarly trained and tested; their behavior was both similar to and different from the baboons' behavior. The results suggest that animals other than humans and chimpanzees can discriminate the relation between relations. They further suggest that entropy detection may underlie same-different conceptualization, but that additional processes may participate in human conceptualization.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Discriminating the Relation Between Relations: The Role of Entropy in Abstract Conceptualization by Baboons (Papio papio) and Humans (Homo sapiens)
- Creators
- Joël Fagot - Comparative Cognition Research Group, Center for Research in Cognitive Neurosciences, Marseille, FranceEdward A Wasserman - University of IowaMichael E Young - Department of Psychology, University of Iowa
- Contributors
- Mark E Bouton (Editor)
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Journal of experimental psychology. Animal behavior processes, Vol.27(4), pp.316-328
- DOI
- 10.1037/0097-7403.27.4.316
- NLM abbreviation
- J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process
- ISSN
- 0097-7403
- eISSN
- 1939-2184
- Publisher
- American Psychological Association
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 10/2001
- Academic Unit
- Psychological and Brain Sciences; Iowa Neuroscience Institute
- Record Identifier
- 9984070245202771
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