IBN-9420756 PI: Thompson; Co-PI: Oden Nontechnical Summary 1 Perception and Judgment of Abstract Same/Different Relations by Monkeys PI: Roger K. R. Thompson, IBN-9420756 Summary: William James (1890/1981) observed that, this sense of sameness is the very keel and background of our thinking, vol 1, p 434). The fundamental importance of understanding the perception and use of same/different relations continues to be recognized today by researchers in both human and non-human cognition. Only humans beyond infancy and adult chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) with a history of language-training can explicitly judge that a pair of shoes is the same as a pair of say, teacups. That is, they can judge that the relationship between the shoes (i.e., identity) is the same as the relationship between the teacups. This ability to judge abstract relations between relations is fundamental to the ability to reason analogically. Recent studies by the present investigators suggest that adult rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) do not even perceive these abstract relations of identity and nonidentity and therefore they apparently lack the fundamental cognitive pre-requisite for judging relations between relations. These initial results were obtained using the same noninvasive behavioral tasks as those used with human infants and chimpanzees. These findings point to a fundamental disparity in the ability of humans and apes on the one hand, and monkeys on the other, to perceive and represent abstract properties of the world. The present research is designed to confirm and extend these initial findings using standard behavioral procedures including "paired-comparison" and "habituation/ dishabituation" preference-for-novelty tasks. Ten adult macaque monkeys will be presented with pairs of objects or video-images of biologically relevant objects and events. Sensitivity to abstract relations will be inferred from differences in the time the animals spend voluntarily inspecting the stimulus materials. The primary goal in all of the proposed research is not to show that one species can or cannot perform any given task. Rather it is to clarify the conditions under which the cited disparity is or is not manifested. Comparisons between closely related species like human, ape and monkey can also be informative with respect to understanding the evolution and function of fundamental cognitive processes.
