Are children any more logical than monkeys on the five-term series problem?

Chalmers, Margaret; McGonigle, Brendan

doi:10.1016/0022-0965(84)90009-2

Cited by 47 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Similarly congruent distance and magnitude functions were obtained from experiments in which non-human primates and adult and juvenile humans were trained using the SCP to learn arbitrary sequences composed of photographs or geometric forms [22,23,[37][38][39]. These are shown in Figures 3c and d (Figures 3a and b).…”

Section: Distance and Magnitude Effectsmentioning

confidence: 74%

The simultaneous chain: a new approach to serial learning

Terrace

2005

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

103

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Recent advances have allowed the application of behaviorism's rigor to the control of complex cognitive tasks in animals. This article examines recent research on serially organized behavior in animals. 'Chaining theory', the traditional approach to the study of such behavior, reduces intelligent action to sequences of discrete stimulus-response units in which each overt response is evoked by a particular stimulus. However, such theories are too weak to explain many forms of serially organized cognition, both in humans and animals. By training non-human primates to produce arbitrary sequences that cannot be learned as chains of particular motor responses, the simultaneous chaining paradigm has overcome limitations of chaining theory in experiments on serial expertise, the use of numerical rules, knowledge of ordinal position, and distance and magnitude effects. IntroductionThe psychology of the conditioned response is arguably behaviorism's major achievement. Sophisticated theories of conditioning [1] have been applied to a wide range of behavior and those principles have led to the discovery of neural mechanisms of conditioned behavior at cortical [2], sub-cortical [3] and cellular [4] levels of the brain. Unfortunately for behaviorism, its major achievement exposed its major limitation. Intelligent behavior is greater than the sum of discrete conditioned responses. Although it was once hoped that chaining theory could explain how individually conditioned responses could be linked together to form complex sequences [5], there is ample theoretical and empirical evidence that many forms of serially organized behavior are beyond its grasp (see Box 1). What is needed is an animal model of serially organized behavior that is based on learning ordinal relationships between stimuli rather than on the conditioning of new responses.One of the main attractions of behaviorism is its rigorous, non-verbal methodology. There is, however, nothing inherent in that methodology that restricts its application to research on conditioning. Recent advances in technology have facilitated the application of behaviorism's rigor to the control of complex cognitive tasks in animals [6]; for example, concept formation [7], timing [8],

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Section: Distance and Magnitude Effectsmentioning

confidence: 74%

The simultaneous chain: a new approach to serial learning

Terrace

2005

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

103

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“…The test for transitivity involves presenting novel stimulus pairs from items that were never previously paired (e.g., BD). Here, B is the correct choice implying transitive inference which for primates has been demonstrated in humans (Chalmers & McGonigle, 1984), but also chimpanzees (Gillan, 1981;Boysen, Bernston, Shreyer & Quigley, 1993), and new-and old-world monkeys (e.g., D 'Amato, & Colombo, 1988;McGonigle & Chalmers, 1977;Treichler & van Tilberg, 1996).…”

Section: Transitive Inference and Serial Ordermentioning

confidence: 88%

Categorical perception and conceptual judgments by nonhuman primates: the paleological monkey and the analogical ape

Thompson¹

2000

Cognitive Science

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Studies of the conceptual abilities of nonhuman primates demonstrate the substantial range of these abilities as well as their limitations. Such abilities range from categorization on the basis of shared physical attributes, associative relations and functions to abstract concepts as reflected in analogical reasoning about relations between relations. The pattern of results from these studies point to a fundamental distinction between monkeys and apes in both their implicit and explicit conceptual capacities. Monkeys, but not apes, might be best regarded as "paleo-logicans" in the sense that they form common class concepts of identity on the basis of identical predicates (i.e., shared features). The discrimination of presumably more abstract relations commonly involves relatively simple procedural strategies mediated by associative processes likely shared by all mammals. There is no evidence that monkeys can perceive, let alone judge, relations-between-relations. This analogical conceptual capacity is found only in chimpanzees and humans. Interestingly, the "analogical ape," like the child, can make its analogical knowledge explicit only if it is first provided with a symbol system by which propositional representations can be encoded and manipulated

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“…Nonverbal studies performed with human subjects have also found transitive choice in test (Chalmers & McGonigle, 1984;Siemann & Delius, 1993;Werner, Koppl, & Delius, 1992). Transitive choice has often been demonstrated in similar studies in humans where a verbal relation between the stimuli (such as "bigger than") has been used (see Halford, 1993, for a review).…”

Section: Wynnementioning

confidence: 97%

Reinforcement accounts for transitive inference performance

Wynne

1995

Animal Learning & Behavior

109

131

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Transitive inference is the ability, given that A >B andB > C, to infer that A > C. Pigeons, rats, chimpanzees, squirrel monkeys, and humans as young as 4 years have all been shown capable of this. In this paper, simple associative learning models are explored as accounts of nonverbal transitive inference performance. A Bush-Mosteller-based model can account for transitive inference under limited conditions. A Rescorla-Wagner-based model can account for transitive inference under all conditions in the literature, but cannot account for some additional nontransitive tests. Afinal configural model can also account for these nontransitive data. The ability of this model to account for transitive inference formation in humans is also considered.The transitive inference task is a form of syllogism familiar to the ancient Greeks and introduced into psychology by Cyril Burt (1911; 1919a, 1919b. Of Burt's tests for assessing the reasoning powers of 7-year-old children, two of the three he considered best for a short test were of the following form:Tom runs faster than Jim: Jack runs slower than Jim. Who is the slowest-Jim, Jack, or Tom? (Burt, 1919a, p. 73) Burt maintained an interest in this task because it correlated well with other measures of intelligence. Piaget was interested in Burt's syllogisms for the light that they could shed on the development of basic intellectual faculties (Piaget, 1928). For Piaget, success on transitive inference syllogisms is part of a general ability to seriate stimuli, as well as evidence for the concrete operational stage of intellectual development (Flavell, 1963).The ability to seriate sets of stimuli, given only partial information about the relationships between them, has far wider generality than does the simple completion of syllogisms. For social animals to be able to estimate their rank in relation to many conspecifics without entering potentially dangerous interactions with every other member of the group must often be adaptive (Cheney & Seyfarth, 1986). Similarly, the ranking offood-item prefThis research was supported by a grant to the author from the Department of Psychology, University of Western Australia, and by grants to John Staddon from the NSF and NIMH. I am grateful to Janice Steirn and Tom Zentall for making data available prior to publication and to Howard Eichenbaum, Tom Zentall, Yin LoLordo, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier drafts. Address correspondence to C. D. L. Wynne, Department of Psychology, University of Westem Australia, Nedlands, Perth, WA 6009, Australia (e-mail: c1ive@psy.uwa.edu.au). Wynne, 1994 [pigeons D. Given that verbal reasoning still seems outside the reach of all except the human species, we may therefore predict that the mechanisms underlying these kinds of performances can be much simpler than hitherto assumed. This paper demonstrates how a complex cognitive ability can be the result of familiar associative mechanisms. This argument will be developed with the use of data from pigeon subjects, but the logic a...

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Are children any more logical than monkeys on the five-term series problem?

Cited by 47 publications

References 14 publications

The simultaneous chain: a new approach to serial learning

The simultaneous chain: a new approach to serial learning

Categorical perception and conceptual judgments by nonhuman primates: the paleological monkey and the analogical ape

Reinforcement accounts for transitive inference performance

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