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  Intuitive statistical inferences in chimpanzees and humans follow Weber’s law

Eckert, J., Call, J., Hermes, J., Herrmann, E., & Rakoczy, H. (2018). Intuitive statistical inferences in chimpanzees and humans follow Weber’s law. Cognition, 180, 99-107. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2018.07.004.

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 Creators:
Eckert, Johanna1, Author                 
Call, Josep1, Author                 
Hermes, Jonas, Author
Herrmann, Esther1, 2, Author                 
Rakoczy, Hannes, Author
Affiliations:
1Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Max Planck Society, ou_1497671              
2Minerva Research Group Human Origins of Self-Regulation, Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Max Planck Society, ou_2074302              

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Free keywords: Analogue magnitude system; Great apes; Numerical cognition; Probabilistic reasoning; Sanctuary-living; Signature limits
 Abstract: Humans and nonhuman great apes share a sense for intuitive statistical reasoning, making intuitive probability judgments based on proportional information. This ability is of fundamental importance, in particular for inferring general regularities from finite numbers of observations and, vice versa, for predicting the outcome of single events using prior information. To date it remains unclear which cognitive mechanism underlies and enables this capacity. The aim of the present study was to gain deeper insights into the cognitive structure of intuitive statistics by probing its signatures in chimpanzees and humans. We tested 24 sanctuary-living chimpanzees in a previously established paradigm which required them to reason from populations of food items with different ratios of preferred (peanuts) and non-preferred items (carrot pieces) to randomly drawn samples. In a series of eight test conditions, the ratio between the two ratios to be discriminated (ROR) was systematically varied ranging from 1 (same proportions in both populations) to 16 (high magnitude of difference between populations). One hundred and forty-four human adults were tested in a computerized version of the same task. The main result was that both chimpanzee and human performance varied as a function of the log(ROR) and thus followed Weber’s law. This suggests that intuitive statistical reasoning relies on the same cognitive mechanism that is used for comparing absolute quantities, namely the analogue magnitude system.

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Language(s): eng - English
 Dates: 2018-07-142018-11
 Publication Status: Issued
 Pages: 9
 Publishing info: -
 Table of Contents: -
 Rev. Type: Peer
 Identifiers: DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2018.07.004
 Degree: -

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Title: Cognition
  Alternative Title : Cognition
Source Genre: Journal
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Publ. Info: New York : Elsevier
Pages: - Volume / Issue: 180 Sequence Number: - Start / End Page: 99 - 107 Identifier: ISSN: 0010-0277