Apes Can Guess What Others Are Thinking -- Just Like Humans, Study Finds (theguardian.com) 66
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Apes have a human-like ability to guess what others are thinking, even in cases when someone holds a mistaken belief, according to research that supports the view that other primates can empathize and have complex inner lives. The findings, in chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans, are the first to clearly demonstrate that apes can predict another's beliefs -- even when they know that presumption is false. In a fresh take on a classic psychology experiment, the apes were able to correctly anticipate that someone would look for a hidden item in a specific location, even if the apes knew that the item was no longer there. The ability to predict that someone holds a mistaken belief -- which psychologists refer to as a "theory of mind" -- is seen as a milestone in cognitive development that children normally acquire by the age of five. The findings overturn the view that the ability to place oneself in another's shoes is uniquely human. Krupenye and Fumihiro Kano, a comparative psychologist at Kyoto University who co-led the study, re-examined the question using a creative approach that involved showing the apes videos of a capering actor dressed in a King Kong suit. The video features an actor dressed as King Kong, who hits a man holding a long pole before darting under one of two haystacks while the human looks on. In some scenarios, the King Kong character switches haystack while the human disappears out of view behind a door. The man then reappears and smacks the haystack he thinks his assailant is hidden under -- presumably to get his own back. By using eye-tracking technology, the scientists showed that 17 out of 22 apes tested switched their gaze to show they had correctly anticipated when the man would target the wrong haystack. The findings were published on Thursday in the journal Science.
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yes and it depends on where the ape was hit. There's even a movie about it http://www.imdb.com/title/tt00... [imdb.com]
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Really? (Score:3)
I think this quote... (Score:2)
...has at least 3 levels of meta here.
"Recognize what is in your sight, and that which is hidden from you will become plain to you. For there is nothing hidden which will not become manifest."
Well of course apes can (Score:5, Informative)
Humans are apes....
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Yeah... it is almost as though we are coming to understand that we are animals like any other on this planet...
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I was modded as "informative". Go figure...
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these homocentrists miss the fatal flaw every time, the only thing the observer misses is itself and what it sees in the mirror is distorted by what others think, due to the ape-like ability and wishful thinking all-alike
in short,
9 out of 10 apes .. (Score:1)
9 out of 10 apes knew I was thinking about bananas and flinging my own shit. Genius!!
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Old News, Washoe showed this in the 1970s (Score:5, Interesting)
Chimps cannot vocalize speech, so Washoe was taught American Sign Language. She could accurately communicate many simple sentences.
One of the many stories is that a lab assistant was absent for a few weeks due to a miscarriage. When Washoe demanded to know why, the assistant signed "my baby die". Washoe was immediately quiet, and signed "cry", even though chimps do not cry. Washoe would also sign more slowly to new assistants that were not good at sign language.
The Gardiners that trained Washoe were not liked by other behavioural psychologists. The latter trained chips in cages with operant conditioning and had poor results, unsurprisingly. The Gardeners lived with Washoe who was treated like a sentient being.
Despite the impressive results, the behaviourists appear to have won, as there seems to have been little follow up research along these lines. The Washoe experiments were totally focused on language. It would be interesting to see more focus on cognition. And in particular, does knowing sign language make chimps smarter. Chimps had been seen signing to themselves, like self talk that seems to be important for human cognition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Chimps cannot vocalize speech, so Washoe was taught American Sign Language.
Several chimps and gorillas have been taught ASL. One thing they do NOT do, is teach that language to their offspring. They do not pass on the knowledge.
Re:Old News, Washoe showed this in the 1970s (Score:5, Interesting)
Washoe, the first chimp to learn sign language, did pass some signs on to another chimp:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Several chimps and gorillas have been taught ASL. One thing they do NOT do, is teach that language to their offspring. They do not pass on the knowledge.
If you had a group of 5 apes where two had sign language taught to them and three who did not and the apes who signed were rewarded for signing, would the non-signing apes begin to mimic sign language to try to obtain rewards?
If this was true, I wonder if apes could be induced to teach sign language to their offspring by rewarding them if they try to sign to their offspring or their offspring mimics signing.
I'm kind of inclined to believe no -- however apes communicate internally would be their native langu
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Read the wikipedia article.
It was found best not to use rewards to teach Washoe, she just wanted to learn. (Same with dogs, by the way.)
And Washoe did teach other apes to sign, by herself, with no explicit reward.
The interesting question is, did being able to sign make them smarter?
the scientists showed that 17 out of 22 apes (Score:1)
still can't write Shakespeare...
But they can write ... (Score:1)
But they can write Windows; and they did.
Nah actually many of the problems in Windows are caused by overly *complex* design internally.
Windows tries to make the exposed surface seem simple by having a lot of complexity underneath. Unix is the opposite - the simple upper layer is formed atop another simple layer underneath, which sits atop another simple layer. (Which is one reason that systemd is hated by those who value the Unix approach.)
Yeah, but ... (Score:2)
I've seen experiments done with small children that demonstrate the ability to comprehend that their 'world view' might not be the same as that held by someone else as far as the location of a hidden toy. This generally happens at around 18 months to two years of age. But I've seen adults that can't seem to comprehend that the world is made up of various groups of people who have different experience or knowledge sets than their own. So at some point, expanding the sim
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This was missed by LUDDITE behaviorists! (Score:5, Funny)
Modern ape apers know that ONLY apes can ape apes, so if you use an apey ape psychologist instead of a LUDDITE behaviorist, everything will be super apey!
Apes!
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Modern ape apers know that ONLY apes can ape apes, so if you use an apey ape psychologist instead of a LUDDITE behaviorist, everything will be super apey!
Apes!
Oh come on .. how could you not lead with "YOU'RE ALL APES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
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Oh come on .. how could you not lead with "YOU'RE ALL APES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Moo apes?
Obligatory (Score:2)
Oooook!
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Gonna oooook all night...
Apes have the capacity for empathy ? (Score:4, Funny)
So that kind of conclusively proves their brains are more advanced than those of Randroids.
Psycologists guess what apes are thinking (Score:1)
There's no reason to assume the apes are guessing "what others are thinking".
They were shown a sequence of events, including the person hitting a haystack where King Kong first hid. That is all. Of course they expect the person to hit that haystack, that was what they were conditioned to expect. No different than Pavolv's dogs salivating when he walked into the lab wearing a white coat. The experiment was rigged to prove the hypothesis.
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The apes predicted the outcome, expecting the human's true behavior to be different from the reality they were aware of.
I disagree. The reality they were aware of is that the human would hit the haystack that King Kong ran to after hitting the person.
There's no reason to assume they're guessing the thought process of the human. For all we know the apes might be thinking that King Kong was pointing out a food source.
One Ape (Score:2)
One Ape can guess what others are thinking.
One million Apes on typewriters can guess what Shakespeare was thinking.
50/50 chance (Score:2)
They probably guess sex 50% of the time and "get your hands off me you damn dirty human" the other 50%.
These folks obviously don't get out much. (Score:2)
Every time I read an article to the effect that researchers have discovered that some non-human creature has a capability previously believed to be unique to humans, I ask myself (and usually those around me) if these researchers have ever had a dog or cat, or closely watched squirrels, crows, goats, or any of a hundred other animal species. There is so much evidence of nonhuman sentience right there in front of us that it very nearly takes a conscious effort not to see it.
I wouldn't call squirrels intellec