The Structure of Individual Differences in the Cognitive Abilities of Children and Chimpanzees

Most studies of animal cognition focus on group performance and neglect individual differences and the correlational structure of cognitive abilities. Moreover, no previous studies have compared the correlational structure of cognitive abilities in nonhuman animals and humans. We compared the struct...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychological science 2010-01, Vol.21 (1), p.102-110
Main Authors: Herrmann, Esther, Hernández-Lloreda, Maria Victoria, Call, Josep, Hare, Brian, Tomasello, Michael
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal cognition
Animals
Aptitude
Child Development
Child, Preschool
Children
Children & youth
Chimpanzees
Cognition
Cognition & reasoning
Cognitive ability
Cognitive models
Comparative analysis
Correlation analysis
Factor analysis
Female
Humans
Individuality
Intelligence
Male
Models, Psychological
Monkeys & apes
Pan troglodytes - psychology
Problem Solving
Social cognition
Social Environment
Social Perception
Space Perception
Spatial models
Species Specificity
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Summary:Most studies of animal cognition focus on group performance and neglect individual differences and the correlational structure of cognitive abilities. Moreover, no previous studies have compared the correlational structure of cognitive abilities in nonhuman animals and humans. We compared the structure of individual differences of 106 chimpanzees and 105 two-year-old human children using 15 cognitive tasks that posed problems about the physical or social world. We found a similar factor of spatial cognition for the two species. But whereas the chimpanzees had only a single factor in addition to spatial cognition, the children had two distinct additional factors: one for physical cognition and one for social cognition. These findings, in combination with previous research, support the proposal that humans share many cognitive skills with nonhuman apes, especially for dealing with the physical world, but in addition have evolved some specialized skills of social cognition.
ISSN:0956-7976
1467-9280
DOI:10.1177/0956797609356511