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
. 2023 Sep-Oct;94(5):1102-1116.
doi: 10.1111/cdev.13861. Epub 2022 Oct 18.

Do chimpanzees reason logically?

Jan M Engelmann  1 , Lou M Haux  2 , Christoph Völter  3 , Hanna Schleihauf  1   4 , Josep Call  5 , Hannes Rakoczy  6 , Esther Herrmann  7
Affiliations

Do chimpanzees reason logically?

Jan M Engelmann et al. Child Dev. 2023 Sep-Oct.

Abstract

Psychologists disagree about the development of logical concepts such as or and not. While some theorists argue that infants reason logically, others maintain that logical inference is contingent on linguistic abilities and emerges around age 4. In this Registered Report, we conducted five experiments on logical reasoning in chimpanzees. Subjects (N = 16; 10 females; M = 24 years) participated in the same setup that has been administered to children: the two-, three-, and four-cup-task. Chimpanzees performed above chance in the two-cup-, but not in the three-cup-task. Furthermore, chimpanzees selected the logically correct option more often in the test than the control condition of the four-cup-task. We discuss possible interpretations of these findings and conclude that our results are most consistent with non-deductive accounts.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

REFERENCES

    1. Amici, F., Aureli, F., & Call, J. (2010). Monkeys and apes: Are their cognitive skills really so different? American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 143(2), 188-197. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.21305
    1. Bates, D., Mächler, M., Bolker, B., & Walker, S. (2015). Fitting linear mixed-effects models using ime4. Journal of Statistical Software, 67(1), 1-48. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v067.i01
    1. Beck, S. R., Robinson, E. J., Carroll, D. J., & Apperly, I. A. (2006). Children's thinking about counterfactuals and future hypotheticals as possibilities. Child Development, 77(2), 413-426. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2006.00879.x
    1. Bermúdez, J. L. (2007). Thinking without words (1st paperb. ed.). Oxford University Press.
    1. Call, J. (2004). Inferences about the location of food in the great apes (pan paniscus, pan troglodytes, Gorilla gorilla, and Pongo pygmaeus). Journal of Comparative Psychology, 118(2), 232-241. https://doi.org/10.1037/0735-7036.118.2.232