Wild rhesus monkeys generate causal inferences about possible and impossible physical transformations in the absence of experience
Wild rhesus monkeys generate causal inferences about possible and impossible physical transformations in the absence of experience
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DOI：
10.1073/pnas.0601247103
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发表时间：
2006-05-02
影响因子：
11.1
通讯作者：
Spaulding, B
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Hauser, M;Spaulding, B
人类婴儿和成年人通过观察单一的、新奇的事件来产生关于物理世界的因果推论，从而违反了休谟的论点，即来自先前经验的时空共现驱动了我们物种的因果感知。这种能力是独特的还是与其他动物共享的？我们解决这个问题，提出了三个实验的结果对自由放养的恒河猴（猕猴），特别是专注于他们的能力，以产生期望的性质完全陌生的物理转换。通过使用期望违反的时间方法，每个实验都向受试者展示了物体的物理可能或不可能的变换（例如，一把刀，而不是一杯水，似乎把苹果切成两半）。在这两个实验中，受试者在不可能转换时比在可能转换时看得更长。随后的实验排除了这些模式可以用联想来解释的可能性。这些结果表明，在缺乏训练或直接经验的情况下，恒河猴从单一的、新的事件中产生因果推理，利用它们对物理世界的知识来指导这种预期。
Human infants and adults generate causal inferences about the physical world from observations of single, novel events, thereby violating Hume's thesis that spatiotemporal cooccurrence from prior experience drives causal perception in our species. is this capacity unique or shared with other animals? We address this question by presenting the results of three experiments on free-ranging rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta), focusing specifically on their capacity to generate expectations about the nature of completely unfamiliar physical transformations. By using an expectancy violation looking-time method, each experiment presented subjects with either physically possible or impossible transformations of objects (e.g., a knife, as opposed to a glass of water, appears to cut an apple in half). In both experiments, subjects looked longer when the transformation was impossible than when it was possible. Follow up experiments ruled out that these patterns could be explained by association. These results show that in the absence of training or direct prior experience, rhesus monkeys generate causal inferences from single, novel events, using their knowledge of the physical world to guide such expectations.