Essentialism in the absence of language? Evidence from rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta).

ABSTRACT: We explored whether rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) share one important feature of human essentialist reasoning: the capacity to track category membership across radical featural transformations. Specifically, we examined whether monkeys--like children (Keil, 1989)--expect a transformed object to have the internal properties of its original category. In two experiments, monkeys watched as an experimenter visually transformed a familiar fruit (e.g. apple) into a new kind of fruit (e.g. coconut) either by placing a fruit exterior over the original, or by removing an exterior shell and revealing the inside kind of fruit. The experimenter then pretended to place an inside piece of the transformed fruit into a box which the monkey was allowed to search. Results indicated that monkeys searched t

SUBMITTER: Phillips W 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4677677 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature