Logical reasoning by a Grey parrot? A case study of the disjunctive syllogism
In: BehaviourAbstract
In Call’s (2004) 2-cups task, widely used to explore logical and causal reasoning across species and early human development, a reward is hidden in one of two cups, one is shown to be empty, and successful subjects search for the reward in the other cup. Infants as young as 17-months and some individuals of almost all species tested succeed. Success may reflect logical, propositional thought and working through a disjunctive syllogism (A or B; not A, therefore B). It may also reflect appreciation of the modal concepts “necessity” and “possibility”, and the epistemic concept “certainty”. Mody & Carey’s (2016) results on 2-year-old children with 3- and 4-cups versions of this task converge with studies on apes in undermining this rich interpretation of success. In the 3-cups version, one reward is hidden in a single cup, another in one of two other cups, and the participant is given one choice, thereby tracking the ability to distinguish a certain from an uncertain outcome. In the 4-cups procedure, a reward is hidden in one cup of each pair (e.g., A, C); one cup (e.g., B) is then shown to be empty. Successful subjects should conclude that the reward is 100% likely in A, only 50% likely in either C or D, and accordingly choose A, thereby demonstrating modal and logical concepts in addition to epistemic ones. Children 2 1/2 years of age fail the 4-cups task, and apes fail related tasks tapping the same constructs. Here we tested a Grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus), Griffin, on the 3- and 4-cups procedures. Griffin succeeded on both tasks, outperforming even 5-year-old children. Controls ruled out that his success on the 4-cups task was due to a learned associative strategy of choosing the cup next to the demonstrated empty one. These data show that both the 3- and 4-cups tasks do not require representational abilities unique to humans. We discuss the competences on which these tasks are likely to draw, and what it is about parrots, or Griffin in particular, that explains his better performance than either great apes or linguistically competent preschool children on these and conceptually related tasks.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
-
Andreuccioli, L. (2018). Young children’s implicit awareness of epistemic states: distinguishing certainty from uncertainty. — Unpublished BA Dissertation, Bath University, Bath.
-
Bloom, L., Lahey, M., Hood, L., Lifter, K. & Fiess, K. (1980). Complex sentences: acquisition of syntactic connectives and the semantic relations they encode. — J. Child Lang. 7: 235-261.
-
Bodrova, E. & Leong, D.J. (2006). Tools of the mind. — Pearson, London.
-
Call, J. (2004). Inferences about the location of food in the great apes (Pan paniscus, Pan troglodytes, Gorilla gorilla, and Pongo pygmaeus). — J. Comp. Psychol. 118: 232-241.
-
Call, J. (2006). Inferences by exclusion in the great apes: the effect of age and species. — Anim. Cogn. 9: 393-403.
-
Call, J. & Carpenter, M. (2001). Do apes and children know what they have seen? — Anim. Cogn. 4: 207-220.
-
Carey, S. (2009). The origin of concepts. — Oxford University Press, New York, NY.
-
Clements, K.A., Gray, S.L., Gross, B. & Pepperberg, I.M. (2018). Initial evidence for probabilistic reasoning in a Grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus). — J. Comp. Psychol. 132: 166-177.
-
Davidson, D. (1982). Rational animals. — Dialectica 36: 317-327.
-
Descartes, R. (1637/1985). Discourse on the method. — In: Descartes: selected philosophical writings (Cottingham, J., Stoothoff, R. & Murdoch, D., trans.). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
-
Feiman, R., Carey, S. & Cushman, F. (2015). Infants’ representations of others’ goals: representing approach over avoidance. — Cognition 136: 204-214.
-
Feiman, R., Mody, S., Sanborn, S. & Carey, S. (2017). What do you mean, no? Children’s comprehension of logical “no” and “not”. — Lang. Learn. Devel. 13: 430-450.
-
Fodor, J. (1975). The language of thought. — Crowell, New York, NY.
-
French, L.A. & Nelson, K. (1985). Young children’s knowledge of relational terms: some ifs, ors, and buts. — Springer, New York, NY.
-
Gathercole, S.E., Pickering, S.J., Ambridge, B. & Wearing, H. (2004). The structure of working memory from 4 to 15 years of age. — Dev. Psychol. 40: 177-190.
-
Giret, N., Miklósi, A. & Kreutzer, M. (2009). Use of experimenter-given cues by African Grey parrots (Psittacus erithacus). — Anim. Cogn. 12: 1-10.
-
Grether, W.F. & Maslow, A.H. (1937). An experimental study of insight in monkeys. — J. Comp. Psychol. 24: 127-134.
-
Griffin, D.R. (2001). Animal minds. — University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.
-
Halberda, J., Sires, S.F. & Feigenson, L. (2006). Multiple spatially overlapping sets can be enumerated in parallel. — Psychol. Sci. 17: 572-576.
-
Hanus, D. & Call, J. (2014). When maths trumps logic: probabilistic judgements in chimpanzees. — Biol. Lett. 10: 20140892. DOI:10.1098/rsbl.2014.0892.
-
Hedges, S.B., Parker, P.H., Sibley, C.G. & Kumar, S. (1996). Continental breakup and the ordinal diversification of birds and mammals. — Nature 381: 226-229.
-
Hermann, E., Misch, A., Hernandez-Lloreda, V. & Tomasello, M. (2015). Uniquely human self-control begins at school age. — Devel. Sci. 18: 979-993.
-
Hill, A., Collier-Baker, E. & Suddendorf, T. (2011). Inferential reasoning by exclusion in great apes, lesser apes, and spider monkeys. — J. Comp. Psychol. 125: 91-103.
-
Hill, A., Collier-Baker, E. & Suddendorf, T. (2012). Inferential reasoning by exclusion in children (Homo sapiens). — J. Comp. Psychol. 126: 243-254.
-
Hochmann, J.R., Carey, S. & Mehler, J. (2018). Infants learn a rule predicated on the relation same but fail to learn a rule predicated on the relation different. — Cognition 177: 49-57.
-
Koepke, A., Gray, S.L. & Pepperberg, I.M. (2015). Delayed gratification: a Grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus) will wait for a better reward. — J. Comp. Psychol. 129: 339-346.
-
Lust, B. & Mervis, C.A. (1980). Development of coordination in the natural speech of young children. — J. Child Lang. 7: 279-304.
-
Mikolasch, S., Kotrshal, K. & Schloegl, C. (2011). African Grey parrots (Psittacus erithacus) use inference by exclusion to find hidden food. — Biol. Lett. 7: 875-877.
-
Mischel, W. (1974). Processes in delay of gratification. — In: Advances in experimental social psychology, Vol. 7 (Berkowitz, L., ed.). Academic Press, New York, NY, p. 249-292.
-
Mody, S. (2016). The developmental origins of logical inference: deduction and domain generality. — Unpublished PhD dissertation, Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
-
Mody, S. & Carey, S. (2016). The emergence of reasoning by the disjunctive syllogism in early childhood. — Cognition 154: 40-48.
-
Morris, B.J. (2008). Logically speaking: evidence for item-based acquisition of the connectives AND & OR. — J. Cogn. Dev. 9: 67-88.
-
Penn, D.C., Holyoak, K.J. & Povinelli, D.J. (2008). Darwin’s mistake: explaining the discontinuity between human and nonhuman minds. — Behav. Brain Sci. 31: 109-130.
-
Pepperberg, I.M. & Carey, S. (2012). Grey parrot number acquisition: the inference of cardinal value from ordinal position on the numeral list. — Cognition 125: 219-232.
-
Pepperberg, I.M., Gray, S.L., Lesser, J.S. & Hartsfield, L.A. (2017). Piagetian liquid conservation in Grey parrots (Psittacus erithacus). — J. Comp. Psychol. 131: 370-383.
-
Pepperberg, I.M. & Hartsfield, L.A. (2014). Can Grey parrots (Psittacus erithacus) succeed on a “complex” foraging task failed by nonhuman primates (Pan troglodytes, Pongo abelii, Sapajus apella) but solved by wrasse fish (Labroides dimidiatus)? — J. Comp. Psychol. 128: 298-306.
-
Pepperberg, I.M., Koepke, A., Livingson, P., Girard, M. & Hartsfied, L.A. (2013). Reasoning by inference: further studies on exclusion in Grey parrots (Psittacus erithacus). — J. Comp. Psychol. 127: 272-281.
-
Pepperberg, I.M. & Nakayama, K. (2016). Robust representation of shape in a Grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus). — Cognition 153: 146-160.
-
Pepperberg, I.M. & Pailian, H. (May 24, 2017). Evolution of mechanisms underlying visual working memory manipulation: when “bird-brain” is a compliment. — Paper presented at the annual conference of the Vision Science Society, Tampa-St. Petersburg, FL.
-
Pepperberg, I.M. & Wilcox, S.E. (2000). Evidence for mutual exclusivity during label acquisition by Grey parrots (Psittacus erithacus)? — J. Comp. Psychol. 114: 219-231.
-
Pepperberg, I.M. & Wilkes, S. (2004). Lack of referential vocal learning from LCD video by Grey parrots (Psittacus erithacus). — Interact. Stud. 5: 75-97.
-
Pepperberg, I.M., Willner, M.R. & Gravitz, L.B. (1997). Development of Piagetian object permanence in a Grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus). — J. Comp. Psychol. 111: 63-75.
-
Péron, F., John, M., Sapowicz, S., Bovet, D. & Pepperberg, I.M. (2013). A study of sharing and reciprocity in Grey parrots (Psittacus erithacus). — Anim. Cogn. 16: 197-210.
-
Péron, F., Thornburg, L., Gross, B., Gray, S.L. & Pepperberg, I.M. (2014). Human–Grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus) reciprocity: a follow-up study. — Anim. Cogn. 17: 937-944.
-
Piaget, J. & Inhelder, B. (1975). The origin of the idea of chance in children (Leake, L., trans.). — W.W. Norton, New York, NY.
-
Premack, D. & Premack, A.J. (1994). Levels of causal understanding in chimpanzees and children. — Cognition 50: 347-362.
-
Redshaw, J. & Suddendorf, T. (2016). Children’s and apes’ preparatory responses to two mutually exclusive possibilities. — Curr. Biol. 26: 1758-1762.
-
Reid, D.W. (2008). Working memory: a cognitive limit to non-human primate recursive thinking prior to hominid evolution. — Evol. Psychol. 6: 676-714.
-
Rescorla, M. (2009). Chrysipus’s dog as a case study in non-linguistic cognition. — In: The philosophy of animal minds (Lurz, R., ed.). Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, p. 52-71.
-
Rohwer, M.A., Kloo, D. & Perner, J. (2012). Escape from meta-ignorance: how children develop an understanding of their own lack of knowledge. — Child Dev. 83: 1869-1883.
-
Rosenberg, R.D. & Feigenson, L. (2013). Infants hierarchically organize memory representations. — Dev. Sci. 16: 610-621.
-
Salwiczek, L.H., Prétôt, L., Demarta, L., Proctor, D., Essler, J., Pinto, A.I., Wismer, S., Stoinski, T., Brosnan, S.F. & Bshary, R. (2012). Adult cleaner wrasse outperform capuchin monkeys, chimpanzees, and orangutans in a complex foraging task derived from cleaner-client reef fish cooperation. — PLoS ONE 7: e49068.
-
Schmitt, V. & Fischer, J. (2009). Inferential reasoning and modality dependent discrimination learning in olive baboons (Papio hamadryas anubis). — J. Comp. Psychol. 123: 316-325.
-
ten Cate, C. & Healy, S.D. (eds) (2017). Avian cognition. — Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
-
Tomasello, M. & Call, J. (1997). Primate cognition. — Oxford University Press, New York, NY.
-
Tornick, J.K. & Gibson, B.M. (2013). Tests of inferential reasoning by exclusion in Clark’s nutcrackers (Nucifraga columbiana). — Anim. Cogn. 16: 583-597.
-
Voelter, C.J. & Call, J. (2017). Causal and inferential reasoning in animals. — In: APA handbook of comparative psychology (Call, J., Burghardt, G., Pepperberg, I.M. & Zentall, T.R., eds). American Psychological Association Press, Washington, DC, p. 643-671.
-
Watson, J.S., Gergely, G., Csanyi, V., Topal, J., Gasci, M. & Sarkozi, Z. (2001). Distinguishing logic from association in the solution of an invisible displacement task by children (Homo sapiens) and dogs (Canis familiaris): using negation of disjunction. — J. Comp. Psychol. 115: 219-226.
-
Zentall, T.R. & Case, J. (2018). The ephemeral-rewards task: optimal performance depends on reducing impulsive choice. — Curr. Dir. Psychol. Sci. 27: 103-109.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 1463 | 553 | 25 |
| Full Text Views | 155 | 51 | 1 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 184 | 86 | 2 |
Logical reasoning by a Grey parrot? A case study of the disjunctive syllogism
In: BehaviourAbstract
In Call’s (2004) 2-cups task, widely used to explore logical and causal reasoning across species and early human development, a reward is hidden in one of two cups, one is shown to be empty, and successful subjects search for the reward in the other cup. Infants as young as 17-months and some individuals of almost all species tested succeed. Success may reflect logical, propositional thought and working through a disjunctive syllogism (A or B; not A, therefore B). It may also reflect appreciation of the modal concepts “necessity” and “possibility”, and the epistemic concept “certainty”. Mody & Carey’s (2016) results on 2-year-old children with 3- and 4-cups versions of this task converge with studies on apes in undermining this rich interpretation of success. In the 3-cups version, one reward is hidden in a single cup, another in one of two other cups, and the participant is given one choice, thereby tracking the ability to distinguish a certain from an uncertain outcome. In the 4-cups procedure, a reward is hidden in one cup of each pair (e.g., A, C); one cup (e.g., B) is then shown to be empty. Successful subjects should conclude that the reward is 100% likely in A, only 50% likely in either C or D, and accordingly choose A, thereby demonstrating modal and logical concepts in addition to epistemic ones. Children 2 1/2 years of age fail the 4-cups task, and apes fail related tasks tapping the same constructs. Here we tested a Grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus), Griffin, on the 3- and 4-cups procedures. Griffin succeeded on both tasks, outperforming even 5-year-old children. Controls ruled out that his success on the 4-cups task was due to a learned associative strategy of choosing the cup next to the demonstrated empty one. These data show that both the 3- and 4-cups tasks do not require representational abilities unique to humans. We discuss the competences on which these tasks are likely to draw, and what it is about parrots, or Griffin in particular, that explains his better performance than either great apes or linguistically competent preschool children on these and conceptually related tasks.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 1463 | 553 | 25 |
| Full Text Views | 155 | 51 | 1 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 184 | 86 | 2 |