Contrasting two versions of the 4-cup 2-item disjunctive syllogism task in great apes.

ABSTRACT: Chimpanzees excel at inference tasks which require that they search for a single food item from partial information. Yet, when presented with 2-item tasks which test the same inference operation, chimpanzees show a consistent breakdown in performance. Here we test a diverse zoo-housed cohort (n = 24) comprising all 4 great ape species under the classic 4-cup 2-item task, previously administered to children and chimpanzees, and a modified task administered to baboons. The aim of this study is to delineate whether the divergent results reported from the literature are taxonomic differences or artefacts of their methodologies, while extending the literature to cover the remaining great ape species. We find that apes adaptively adjust their choice behaviour in both variants of the task, but th

SUBMITTER: Jones B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11695687 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature