Chimps Versus Children

[dianahsieh]

Originally posted by Diana from NoodleFood,

I must admit, I'm really not sure what to make of this finding that young children will imitate complex actions modeled by adults, even the obviously useless elements, whereas chimps very quickly weed out the useless elements. Any thoughts?

[softwareNerd]

There are some interesting comments if one follows the original link back to Diana's blog. I'm reproducing my own comment here:

Quite a fascinating read. On further reflection, the result with the kids is not that surprising. As for chimps, I haven't brought up one of those.

Kids will often follow pretty complicated sequences to achieve a goal, without always questioning the steps on those complex sequences. [They eventually will, mind you... as one of your commenters said. Every parent knows how kids try taking short cuts even when they should not.]

Indeed, sometimes, kids will stick to some "correlated" behavior that is not "causative" (something that just happened to be coincident with something else) and it can sometimes be an effort for an adult to get them to break such a "link".

As to why? and as to the evolutionary reason! I do not know. What I do observe in my own kid that he gets much *pleasure* from imitation: whether it is imitating a complex sequence or imitating Harry Potter or a Power-ranger.

[Liriodendron Tulipifera]

Unfortunately, I could not view the NY Times article.

I read about a study (I didn't read the original study) in which the researchers seemed to prove that chimps understand the concept of belief, which is something that three year old children do not understand.

Here goes: Let's say that Tom and Harry, 3 year old humans, are allowed into a room where they play with a ball. Tom and Harry then place the ball in a box. Tom is asked to leave the room. The researcher then asks Harry to take the ball out of the box and place it in a basket. The researcher asks Harry "Harry, when Tom comes back in the room, where will he look for the ball?" Harry will answer, "In the basket!" Three year olds cannot understand the concept of belief. They do not understand that others' views about the world differ from their own. This is called the false belief task, and children cannot perform it properly until about age four.

A group of researchers have studied false-belief tasks in chimps. Obviously, chimps are not capable of human language, so the studies had to be a bit more clever. In one study I read about, subordinate chimps were allowed to watch food being hidden on a stage in various locations: that is, they were aware of all locations where food was hidden. At the same time they were also watching a more dominant chimp that was watching the same procedure, but because of the setup, the dominant chimp could not see all pieces of food being hidden. When both chimps were released, the subordinate chimp was more likely to go for the food that the dominant chimp did not see hidden.

Since subordinate chimps will defer to dominant chimps re: the taking of food, this suggested to the researchers that the subordinate chimp could keep track of what the other chimp knew, and altered his actions accordingly to get more food for himself.

Many more studies will need to be done to determine how much chimps can reason, but in the meantime it's certainly fascinating. It is a relevant topic, since biotechnologically we are at the point where we can pinpoint certain genes that are responsible for certain behaviors (such as articulate speech) in humans, and find their analogs in chimps. I don't know enough about this area of research, but I presume that those genes may be altered by engineering at some point to create a kind of hybrid/chimera/or transgenic chimp that would have special abilities.

[softwareNerd]

Unfortunately, I could not view the NY Times article.

Hmm! I don't remember logging in the last time I accessed the article. Anyhow, you can set up a login. It's free and quite painless. Always worth having access to the NYTimes.

Meanwhile, my quick summary of the study (errors are all mine):

• Chimps and kids were shown tasks with multiple steps, say step-1 and step-2, to achieve a goal.
  
• In the first presentation, it was not clear that step-1 was not required to achieve the goal. Both chimps and kids did both steps.
  
• In the next presentation, it was visually obvious that step-1 was not required to achieve the goal. The chimps dropped it and just performed step-2. However, the kids continued to mimic the researcher and do step-1, even when the researcher told them to choose the best way, and even when the researcher left the room.
  

[Liriodendron Tulipifera]

Hmm! I don't remember logging in the last time I accessed the article. Anyhow, you can set up a login. It's free and quite painless. Always worth having access to the NYTimes.

Meanwhile, my quick summary of the study (errors are all mine):

• Chimps and kids were shown tasks with multiple steps, say step-1 and step-2, to achieve a goal.
  
• In the first presentation, it was not clear that step-1 was not required to achieve the goal. Both chimps and kids did both steps.
  
• In the next presentation, it was visually obvious that step-1 was not required to achieve the goal. The chimps dropped it and just performed step-2. However, the kids continued to mimic the researcher and do step-1, even when the researcher told them to choose the best way, and even when the researcher left the room.
  

Huh. That's really interesting! thanks. (Oh - I did not realize it was free. I admit, I was lazy and did not bother to try setting up an account. Just assumed I had to pay.)

Anyway, I'm very interested in this topic, so maybe when I feel better and have more time, I'll return. Shortly after I wrote this I had to put my dog down, so I'm kind of sad.

[Liriodendron Tulipifera]

unfortunately, although I did set up an account, I could not read the entire article, only the first few sentences. The article seems to indicate that the children were preschool age. That means 3-4, correct? How old were the kids in the experiment, exactly? After all, I can teach a dog more tricks than a newborn baby. It doesn't prove anything except that the dog, at its adult developmental stage, is smarter than the baby at a very juvenile developmental stage. It's a comparison of apples and oranges.

The reason I ask about the age of the children is that some people seem to feel threatened that animals might have some degree of rationality. I can't really understand why. Even if some animal species can understand a few simple concepts, it's really nothing in comparison to man's conceptual abilities. Now, if the chimps appeared more rational than eleven year old children, that would really make me sit back and go, "Wow!"

A friend of mine is reading a book called "Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe" and the thesis of the book is that "intelligence" inevitably had to evolve because of molecular constraints on the evoutionary process. Of course, scientists like Stephen Jay Gould would argue otherwise, that everything is contingent on what happened before, and the chances of something like humans (although they may not have five finger and five toes) evolving again if evolution were to be "replayed," are infinitesimally small. This is something I would like to investigate. Ah, too many books, too little time.

I don't necessarily believe this statement, but these examples of chimps and children are perhaps interesting examples of "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny," meaning: the developmental sequence of a species from juvenile to adult is mirrored in the evolutionary process of that species. What if we could "transplant" the genes for articulate speech in chimps? Would they then show the capacity for language, as they do not show now?

DavidOdden, do you know anything about where along the evolutionary timeline language developed? It seems to me that it would have evolved after the ability to form concepts, as a means of communicating those concepts, which would, of course, have resulted in increased survival. Of course, this is mere speculation, but if it is true, it might explain why chimps show some signs of rationality without being able to communicate those concepts through language.

Depending on the age of the children in the experiment mentioned by Diana, their ability to communicate may be approximately on the level of that of a chimp. My current understanding is that three year olds really don't have the capacity for language as such, although they do have the capacity for verbal communication, which is right about where chimps are.

Edited December 28, 2005 by Liriodendron Tulipifera

[softwareNerd]

Unfortunately, although I did set up an account, I could not read the entire article, only the first few sentences.

Seems like you missed it by a day. They've moved it to their 'pay to read' section. I did find the blog by the author though. He does not have the text of the NY Times article, but he does have a link to some document upon which the study was based.

The article seems to indicate that the children were preschool age. That means 3-4, correct?

From memory... that's right.

[DavidOdden]

It doesn't prove anything except that the dog, at its adult developmental stage, is smarter than the baby at a very juvenile developmental stage. It's a comparison of apples and oranges.

<rant>I have a general rule about only responding with outrage to popular press science articles that make extreme claims. The wisest course would be to wait for this experiment to be completed and vetted to reviewers, and we can then respond to the published results and not the sound bites. I'm very hard-nosed about this, and I do not believe these claims for a minute. We've been massively defrauded over chimp language claims, so I'm not biting down on that hook until I know what I'm really being asked to swallow. I'm always willing to change my tune when presented by credible scientific evidence, but the NYT is not a reputable scientific journal. Something that's really missing in all of the chimp lit is control over the chimp's history. None of these monkeys are fresh-caught wild chimps -- they are professional experimental subjects, who have been trained to drive cars, repair computers, waggle their hands in a manner that weakly resembles ASL, and place wool caps on the heads of their handlers.</rant>

What if we could "transplant" the genes for articulate speech in chimps? Would they then show the capacity for language, as they do not show now?

That presupposes we've found such a thing (or, such things). Actually, I think it would be a very cool line of experimentation, to add and subtract genetic bits and see what happens -- I know they do that to make glowing goldfish, but I mean monkeying with monkey brains. But, that's both too sci-fi, and probably against the law (or, future law).

DavidOdden, do you know anything about where along the evolutionary timeline language developed? It seems to me that it would have evolved after the ability to form concepts, as a means of communicating those concepts, which would, of course, have resulted in increased survival. Of course, this is mere speculation, but if it is true, it might explain why chimps show some signs of rationality without being able to communicate those concepts through language.

There's no evolutionary story to tell. Human language is actually structurally closer to bird song, and it is no more like monkey talk than it is like cow moo. Suppose for fun we assume that Sahelanthropus Tchadensis had no faculty for language or conceptual thinking, since chimps don't. Then we have some 7 million years of evolution to cover, and not a shred of concrete evidence to throw at the topic. It was claimed in the '70s that Neanderthal had at best limited ability to speak, but that was a highly conjectural claim based on inadequate fossil evidence regarding the position of the hyoid bone, which was disposed of by later fossil evidence showing that there is no significant difference in the position of the hyoid bone of modern man and Neanderthal. Anyhow, that only addresses a very crude hardware detail and tells us nothing at all about the evolution of the software. Not only do brains leave little fossil evidence (to be sure, there are plenty of fossilized brains ), but even with fresh brains (isn't that from some movie?) we can't tell anything about conceptual ability or language. There are a lot of good stories you can tell about language evolution, but I haven't yet seen on that is solidly backed up with facts.

I tend to believe the art-evidence -- decorations are, for me, good enough evidence of abstract and conceptual thinking. Purely philosophically, though, it is inconceivable to me that man developed language first, and then developed concepts. Language presupposes concepts. However, I doubt that there could be a strict separation where at one stage man had a full-blown conceptual system but no language. Since I don't believe that hominids instantaneously developed a conceptual faculty, the unanswered and important question is, what would it mean to have a half-formed conceptual faculty?

[softwareNerd]

This NYTimes article seemed to be more about humans than about chimps. The "chimps beat the kids" part came across as the author's own humor, rather than the subject of the study. Granted that this is a pop-press article and must therefore be taken with a huge grain of salt.

With that said, however, what it was trying to prove seems quite believable: young human kids will sometimes mimic even if they do not understand the purpose of doing so.

The fact that chimps do not mimic such "optional" behavior as well as kids do, led the researcher to suggest that their must be a good evolutionary reason why humans do so.

[Liriodendron Tulipifera]

<rant>I have a general rule about only responding with outrage to popular press science articles that make extreme claims. The wisest course would be to wait for this experiment to be completed and vetted to reviewers, and we can then respond to the published results and not the sound bites. I'm very hard-nosed about this, and I do not believe these claims for a minute. We've been massively defrauded over chimp language claims...

I agree. Although what I have found on chimp language with google was very conservative. i.e. basically saying that chimps are not capable of language. Perhaps I'm ignoring the more "pop culture" stuff.

Anyhow, there are one or two good skeptical points raised by other scientists on the blog that softwareNerd mentions about the validity of the researchers' claims in this case. One was that the reward was different for the children (praise by the researcher) but not for the chimp (food). Clearly, that's one problem right there. Also, the children got verbal instructions and a mechanical demonstration, whereas the chimps got simply a mechanical demonstration. That is hardly keeping the conditions same between treatments!!! Aaaaargh!

I tend to believe the art-evidence -- decorations are, for me, good enough evidence of abstract and conceptual thinking. Purely philosophically, though, it is inconceivable to me that man developed language first, and then developed concepts. Language presupposes concepts. However, I doubt that there could be a strict separation where at one stage man had a full-blown conceptual system but no language. Since I don't believe that hominids instantaneously developed a conceptual faculty, the unanswered and important question is, what would it mean to have a half-formed conceptual faculty?

I agree. As for the transgenic chimp bit, I would say it's on the way. While there are certainly regulations as regards transgenic work and animal experimentation, it still goes on, and the fact that we have human cloning going on seems to indicate that humans will still try to find a way around these legal barriers in order to do science. There have been several genes identified that are at least partly responsible for speech. One of them that is responsible for articulate speech in humans differs by only one nucleotide (or an amino acid, if protein, I honestly don't remember which) in the chimp analog. !!!

[softwareNerd]

I read about another monkey study recently: Social Structure, Robustness, and Policing Cost in a Cognitively Sophisticated Species. Jessica C. Flack, Frans B. M. de Waal, and David C. Krakauer

In essence what they found among a certain species of monkey was that some "leaders" weren't merely like so-called "alpha" animals, but went further, impartially intervening and resolving disputes among their "lessers". Governments (the researchers call them police) could be prevalent among some simians and could have survival value. That's going to irritate some anarchists

[Of course, caveat emptor with all such studies.]