Lenore, with Jumanji's favorite carbon...
The next step is to design more complicated experiments to know up to which point, in comparison with our own mastering of this ability, they do master such ability. This will then help to answer to the question of what was specifically developed in our human lineage.As I said before, Lenore and Jumanji have a strange relationship. Lenore can't stand Jumanji. She keeps trying to charge him anytime he is too close to her. She also chases him during feeding time and is exasperated by his displays. Males bonobos like indeed to display with what they can find. They take a box for example and pull it around the enclosure, producing sound and vocals at the same time. In such times, Lenore usually comes to him, tries to catch him and get the box that he had to abandon. Somehow it's really funny to see that sometimes, he can not even reach the box because Lenore goes to take it before he can reach it. He will then tries to take it back, if Lenore is kept busy by something else, for example an agression by Erin.
All these observations and ad hoc comments must not be taken as scientific claims. It is important to understand that I used "his favorite box" or "to annoy her" on purpose and the use of such intentional vocabulary has to be understood in the right way. I don't intend that they conduct a machiavelian reasoning to annoy the other on purpose. It is obviously what we would say about humans that would act this way. It's more complicated when we talk about apes. We don't know if they really do that on purpose. However, I did not invent those observations and we have to be able to explain them. That's where experimental stuff occurs. It allows us to ask the question with a minimum of alternative explanations for the answer that is observed.
The observation is the fact and the experiments will allow to ask the questions raised by this observation. That's how both works (observation, more ethological, and experiments, more psychological) interact and are complementary. It is important to understand how this kind of observations help to build experimental paradigms. For example, the fact that Lenore seems to take on purpose Jumanji's box and not Akili's box, added to the fact that she seems to really hate him and not Akili, raises questions about the machiavelian behaviour that she seems to show. Taking Jumanji's favorite tool asks also questions about the understanding of ownership: does she understand that she takes "his" thing? Suppose that she understands really that she is taking "his" thing and that she is doing that on purpose: "I am doing this thing in order him to be upset". You reach another level. "I am doing this thing for him to see me and be upset". Another level. That's how we get to the "final stage" of mind reading: theory of mind. These different cognitive abilities appear in the human infant during his development. It is very interesting to study if such abilities do exist in apes, because if it is the case, that means with a good probability that they already existed in our last common ancestor, 6 million years ago. Taken that a simple observation is full of flaws and could be explained by many different explanations, it is important to go to the lab and build strong paradigms that address the question clearly: they will question if yes or no the apes have this ability, because the design of the experiment will aim to ask a specific question relevant to this ability and which, ultimately, could not be realized without it.
Obviously it's not that simple and it's very hard to design such experiment that can give a yes or a no to the question. However, it helps to reduce the amount of possible explanations and to have a better idea of what is going on in their mind.
All these observations and ad hoc comments must not be taken as scientific claims. It is important to understand that I used "his favorite box" or "to annoy her" on purpose and the use of such intentional vocabulary has to be understood in the right way. I don't intend that they conduct a machiavelian reasoning to annoy the other on purpose. It is obviously what we would say about humans that would act this way. It's more complicated when we talk about apes. We don't know if they really do that on purpose. However, I did not invent those observations and we have to be able to explain them. That's where experimental stuff occurs. It allows us to ask the question with a minimum of alternative explanations for the answer that is observed.
The observation is the fact and the experiments will allow to ask the questions raised by this observation. That's how both works (observation, more ethological, and experiments, more psychological) interact and are complementary. It is important to understand how this kind of observations help to build experimental paradigms. For example, the fact that Lenore seems to take on purpose Jumanji's box and not Akili's box, added to the fact that she seems to really hate him and not Akili, raises questions about the machiavelian behaviour that she seems to show. Taking Jumanji's favorite tool asks also questions about the understanding of ownership: does she understand that she takes "his" thing? Suppose that she understands really that she is taking "his" thing and that she is doing that on purpose: "I am doing this thing in order him to be upset". You reach another level. "I am doing this thing for him to see me and be upset". Another level. That's how we get to the "final stage" of mind reading: theory of mind. These different cognitive abilities appear in the human infant during his development. It is very interesting to study if such abilities do exist in apes, because if it is the case, that means with a good probability that they already existed in our last common ancestor, 6 million years ago. Taken that a simple observation is full of flaws and could be explained by many different explanations, it is important to go to the lab and build strong paradigms that address the question clearly: they will question if yes or no the apes have this ability, because the design of the experiment will aim to ask a specific question relevant to this ability and which, ultimately, could not be realized without it.
Obviously it's not that simple and it's very hard to design such experiment that can give a yes or a no to the question. However, it helps to reduce the amount of possible explanations and to have a better idea of what is going on in their mind.
TG
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