Do Nonhumans Seek Explanations?

Abstract

From an early age, children explore their environment in a way suggesting that they reason about causal variables and seek causal explanations. Indeed, following extensive studies of problem-solving abilities in chimpanzees, Povinelli (Folk Physics for Apes, Oxford University Press, 2000) proposed that this ability to reason about unobservable variables is unique to humans. Following on from this, Povinelli and Dunphy-Lelii (Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 55(2), [187][188][189][190][191][192][193][194][195] 2001) addressed the question whether chimpanzees would explore objects with the aim of elucidating unobservable and surprising object properties. Chimpanzees, unlike preschool children, did not show increased object exploration following a change in the unobservable properties of an object. We critically discuss these findings and argue that more research using a greater variety of methods and with a larger number of species is required to support the hypothesis that only humans engage in explanation seeking. We conclude by highlighting avenues for future research based on developmental and comparative research aimed at object exploration and information seeking conducted since the original investigation by Povinelli and Dunphy-Lelii.

Dogs’ expectations about occlusion events: from expectancy violation to exploration

“…3) was not designed to investigate links between the type of expectancy violation and specific exploratory actions. Future research should address the specificity of this link in dogs but also other animals, particularly in those that are known for their curiosity, object exploration, and tool use as they might be the most promising candidates in this respect [ 7 ].…”

“…Nonhuman animals are well known to exhibit an orientation response and increased arousal when exposed to unusual stimuli [ 6 ]. Nevertheless, little is known about the link between expectancy violation concerning physical regularities and exploration in nonhuman animals [ 7 ]. One cannot take for granted a correlation between looking times and active exploration; examples in both the developmental and comparative literature demonstrate that increased looking times do not always result in action [e.g.…”

It's Hard to Be Social Alone: Cognitive Complexity as Transfer Within and Across Domains

“…A possible advantage of the ability to reason about mental states is to explain events after they have occurred. However, little research has addressed whether other species engage in backward reasoning (Povinelli & Dunphy Lelii, 2001) despite the importance of this question (Völter et al, 2020). Although it seems reasonable to assume that ToM would evolve in highly social species in order to understand the intentions of groupmates, it is unclear what element of sociality would be most predictive of ToM, and less socially complex species have not been tested in the most promising paradigms.…”

Twenty Years after Folk Physics for Apes: Researchers' Understanding of How Nonhumans Understand the World

“…At first glance, it might appear that researchers are more likely to attribute so-called "higher-order" cognitive processes to not just chimpanzees, but to several nonhuman species, including corvids and canids (Krupenye & Call, 2019) compared to the evenly balanced debates that took place in the years immediately preceding and following the publication of Povinelli's influential book (e.g., Call, Hare & Tomasello, 2003;Heyes, 1998;Povinelli & Vonk, 2003). However, even if many comparative psychologists are increasingly willing to ascribe human-like causal reasoning capacities to some nonhumans, others are expressing some skepticism (e.g., Horschler et al, 2020;Taylor, 2020). At the very least, most researchers carefully consider alternative interpretations of their results, and ambiguous conclusions pointing to the need for further study appear more prominent in the literature (although see Farrar et al, 2020).…”