Sensitivity to Relational Similarity and Object Similarity in Apes and Children

• Published in: Current biology 2016-02, Vol.26 (4), p.531-535
• Main Authors: Christie, Stella, Gentner, Dedre, Call, Josep, Haun, Daniel Benjamin Moritz
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Animals; Child, Preschool; Cognition; Humans; Pan paniscus - psychology; Pan troglodytes - psychology; Pongo abelii - psychology; Problem Solving; Random Allocation
• ISSN: 0960-9822; 1879-0445
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2015.12.054

Relational reasoning is a hallmark of sophisticated cognition in humans [1, 2]. Does it exist in other primates? Despite some affirmative answers [3–11], there appears to be a wide gap in relational ability between humans and other primates—even other apes [1, 2]. Here, we test one possible explanation for this gap, motivated by developmental research showing that young humans often fail at relational reasoning tasks because they focus on objects instead of relations [12–14]. When asked, “duck:duckling is like tiger:?,” preschool children choose another duckling (object match) rather than a cub. If other apes share this focus on concrete objects, it could undermine their relational reasoning in similar ways. To test this, we compared great apes and 3-year-old humans’ relational reasoning on the same spatial mapping task, with and without competing object matches. Without competing object matches, both children and Pan species (chimpanzees and bonobos) spontaneously used relational similarity, albeit children more so. But when object matches were present, only children responded strongly to them. We conclude that the relational gap is not due to great apes’ preference for concrete objects. In fact, young humans show greater object focus than nonhuman apes. •Apes and children were compared in their concrete and abstract relational thinking•Both 3-year-old children and Pan species spontaneously used relational similarity•But human children used more object similarity; they were more concrete than Pan•Paradoxically, we may be smarter than apes also because we are more concrete Does the analogical gap between humans and other apes come from a differential attention to objects or to relations? Christie et al. found that bonobos, chimpanzees, and 3-year-old children use relations, but only children strongly attend to object matches. Humans are both more relational and more concrete than apes—contributing to the analogical gap.