Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Comparative Study
. 2001 Oct;27(4):316-28.

Discriminating the relation between relations: the role of entropy in abstract conceptualization by baboons (Papio papio) and humans (Homo sapiens)

Affiliations
  • PMID: 11676083
Comparative Study

Discriminating the relation between relations: the role of entropy in abstract conceptualization by baboons (Papio papio) and humans (Homo sapiens)

J Fagot et al. J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process. 2001 Oct.

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.

PubMed Disclaimer

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources