Do non-human primates really represent others' ignorance? A test of the awareness relations hypothesis
Name:
Cognition_awareness_relations_ ...
Size:
1.452Mb
Format:
PDF
Description:
Final Accepted Manuscript
Affiliation
Univ Arizona, Cognit Sci Grad Interdisciplinary ProgramUniv Arizona, Dept Psychol
Univ Arizona, Cognit Sci Program
Univ Arizona, Sch Anthropol
Issue Date
2019-09
Metadata
Show full item recordPublisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE BVCitation
Horschler, D. J., Santos, L. R., & MacLean, E. L. (2019). Do non-human primates really represent others’ ignorance? A test of the awareness relations hypothesis. Cognition, 190, 72-80.Journal
COGNITIONRights
© 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Collection Information
This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at repository@u.library.arizona.edu.Abstract
Non-human primates can often predict how another agent will behave based on that agent's knowledge about the world. But how do non-human primates represent others' knowledge states? Researchers have recently proposed that non-human primates form "awareness relations" to attribute objectively true information to other minds, as opposed to human-like representations that track others' ignorance or false belief states. We present the first explicit test of the awareness relations hypothesis by examining when rhesus macaques' understanding of other agents' knowledge falters. In Experiment 1, monkeys watched an agent observe a piece of fruit (the target object) being hidden in one of two boxes. While the agent's view was occluded, either the fruit moved out of its box and directly back into it, or the box containing the fruit opened and immediately closed. We found that monkeys looked significantly longer when the agent reached incorrectly rather than correctly after the box's movement, but not after the fruit's movement. This result suggests that monkeys did not expect the agent to know the fruit's location when it briefly and arbitrarily moved while the agent could not see it, but did expect the agent to know the fruit's location when only the box moved while the agent could not see it. In Experiment 2, we replicated and extended both findings with a larger sample, a different target object, and opposite directions of motion in the test trials. These findings suggest that monkeys reason about others' knowledge of objects by forming awareness relations which are disrupted by arbitrary spatial manipulation of the target object while an agent has no perceptual access to it.Note
12 month embargo; available online 24 April 2019ISSN
0010-0277EISSN
1873-7838PubMed ID
31026672Version
Final accepted manuscriptSponsors
NIMH [R01MH096875]; NCRR [CM-5-P40FtR003640-13]; Emil W. Haury Fellowship from the School of Anthropology at the University of Arizona; Graduate College at the University of Arizona; Yale Universityae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1016/j.cognition.2019.04.012
Scopus Count
Collections
Related articles
- What do monkeys know about others' knowledge?
- Authors: Drayton LA, Santos LR
- Issue date: 2018 Jan
- The origins of belief representation: monkeys fail to automatically represent others' beliefs.
- Authors: Martin A, Santos LR
- Issue date: 2014 Mar
- Monkeys represent others' knowledge but not their beliefs.
- Authors: Marticorena DC, Ruiz AM, Mukerji C, Goddu A, Santos LR
- Issue date: 2011 Nov
- The developmental origins of naïve psychology in infancy.
- Authors: Poulin-Dubois D, Brooker I, Chow V
- Issue date: 2009
- Great apes use self-experience to anticipate an agent's action in a false-belief test.
- Authors: Kano F, Krupenye C, Hirata S, Tomonaga M, Call J
- Issue date: 2019 Oct 15