Do Apes have a TOM Flashcards
Evidence relating to apes’ ability to understand the mental states of others wrt:
–Goals & intentions
–Perception & knowledge
–False belief
So, do chimps have a theory of mind?
Povinelli- behavioural rules
Tomasello- theory of mind in some sense
•reports of ‘mentalising’ in the wild (anecdotes)
•Evidence that they understand: goals/intentions and seeing=knowing
•BUT: failure to solve FB tasks in lab (until 2016!)
•Mixed evidence
•Difference for
–Competition vs cooperation ???
•Different ways to interpret the results
Authors claim
Great apes anticipate that other individuals will act according to false beliefs
Competing explanation:
apes used knowledge of abstract rules — specifically, that people tend to look for objects in the place they last saw them
Unique to humans?
possibility:
-chimpanzee’s mind seems similar to ours precisely because it is similar
2nd possibility:
- We cannot help distorting the chimpanzee’s mind, recreating it in our own image
Premack and Woodruff (1978): Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind?
- Chimp offered correct solutions to an actor’s problems
* Suggesting she could infer the actor’s intentions
Woodruff & Premack (1979)
When human cooperated with chimpanzee in finding a goal (hidden incentive):
•chimpanzees able to produce and comprehend behavioural cues which conveyed accurate locational information
When human and chimpanzee competed for the goal:
•chimpanzees learned to withhold information or mislead the recipient
•and to discount or go against the sender’s own misleading cues
But only after A LOT of training!
Provides evidence of a capacity for intentional communication / deception
Do chimps have a theory of mind
The debate
Povinelli camp
•Chimps do not reason about others’ beliefs, or any other mental states
•same behaviours, but not same underlying psychological mechanisms
Tomasello camp
•Chimps have ToM in some respects, but not in others
•No evidence whether they understand false beliefs
•BUT: chimps understand:
–goals and intentions, and
–perception and knowledge
of others
Povinelli camp
- Chimps do not reason about others’ beliefs, or any other mental states
- same behaviours, but not same underlying psychological mechanisms
Tomasello camp
Chimps have ToM in some respects, but not in others
•No evidence whether they understand false beliefs
•BUT: chimps understand:
–goals and intentions, and
–perception and knowledge
of others
Do chimps have a theory of mind
Behavioural abstraction Hypothesis
•Understand only surface-level of behaviour and form behavioural rules
•‘BAH’ posits that chimpanzees:
–make predictions about future behaviours that follow from past behaviours, and
–adjust their own behaviour accordingly.
Behavioural Abstraction Hypothesis
•Understand only surface-level of behaviour and form behavioural rules
•‘BAH’ posits that chimpanzees:
–make predictions about future behaviours that follow from past behaviours, and
–adjust their own behaviour accordingly.
Beyond behavioural rules
•Chimps highly social animals – need to anticipate what others do
•Observing previous behaviour and deriving set of behavioural rules enables behavioural prediction
•BUT: Inferring states not only in previously observed situations,
but also in novel situations
•Need to anticipate actions based on goals and intentions
Call and Tomasello 2008
Understanding goals and intentions
➢ Chimps show understanding of goals or intentions
➢ Imitation studies contradict Povinelli’s behavioural abstraction hyp
Buttelman et al 2007
Understanding goals and intentions
- chimps imitate rationally
- Imitated E’s novel action when he seemed to do it intentionally but NOT when this was due to a physical constraint
- chimps understand other’s goals and intentions
Altruistic helping requires
- Cognition = understanding of another’s goals
* altruistic motivation = no benefit/costly
Altruistic helping
Warneken and Tomasello 2006
•Study 1: 18mos infants (N=24) Study 2: 36-54mos chimps (N=3) •Procedure: 10 situations, 4 categories 1.Out-of-reach 2.Access thwarted by physical object 3.Achieving wrong result 4.Using wrong means 3 request phases (10s focus only, 10s alternate gaze, 10s verbalise)
Altruistic helping
Warneken and Tomasello 2006
Infant data
- children and chimps both willing to help without reward or praise
- Chimps helped more in reaching tasks than other tasks (salient cue?)
- differ in ability to interpret others’ need for help?
- Methodological note: cooperation vs competition
Understanding others’ perception and knowledge
Important to know not only the goals of another but also:
•What s/he can see
•What s/he knows
will help determine what s/he does.
Povinelli and Eddy 1996
Can chimps follow gaze
•chimp looks to spot behind her
•chimp tries to look behind screen
–target cannot be what I cannot see
Understanding perception
Negative evidence
Povinelli and Preuss 1995
Povinelli and Eddy 1996
Chimps beg for food from blindfolded human
Begging is indiscriminate
can chimps appreciate what others ‘see’?
•Chimps experts at noticing finest subtleties of eye movements and gaze directions
•possess and learn rules about visual perception
•BUT:
these rules do not necessarily incorporate the notion that seeing is “about” something
–oblivious to psychological distinction between begging from blindfolded carer vs non-blindfolded
•Chimps cannot reason about seeing?
Pavinelli and Eddy 3 explanations
- general delay in psychological development in chimpanzees
- chimpanzees may possess a different (but nonetheless mentalistic) theory of attention
- subjective understanding of visual perception may be unique to humans
Kaminski et al 2004
Understanding perception
Positive evidence
- Chimps begged more when they were being watched
* Sensitive to both body and face orientation but not eyes
