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Liquid Conservation in Orangutans (Pongo Pygmaeus) and Humans (Homo Sapiens): Individual Differences and Perceptual Strategies

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Liquid Conservation in Orangutans (Pongo Pygmaeus) and Humans (Homo Sapiens): Individual Differences and Perceptual Strategies Journal of Comparative Psychology Copyright 1996 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 1996, Vol. 110, No. 3, 219-232 0735-7036/96/$3.00 Liquid Conservation in Orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) and Humans (Homo sapiens): Individual Differences and Perceptual Strategies Josep Call and Philippe Rochat Emory University Four orangutans (1 juvenile, 2 subadults, and 1 adult) and ten 6-8-year-old children were tested in 4 liquid conservation tasks of increasing levels of difficulty. Task difficulty depended on the type of transformation (continuous vs. discontinuous quantities) and the relative contrast between the shapes of the containers. Results indicate that orangutans did not display conservation in the strict sense; instead they showed "partial" conservation (inter- mediate reactions according to J. Piaget & B, Inhelder, 1941). In contrast, some of the children provided evidence of conservation in all 4 tasks, showing "true" or logically necessary conservation in the original sense proposed by J. Piaget and B. Inhelder (1941). Although orangutans did not show conservation in the strict sense, as J. Piaget (1955) and others have generally agreed it should be defined, orangutans behaved as individual and creative problem solvers, adopting different perceptual strategies depending on the task. Detecting regularities in the environment is arguably a Within the Piagetian framework, another major achieve- major functional orientation of any biological system. The ment in the development of children's ability to detect detection of invariance is an important aspect of cognition. invariance occurs around 7-8 years of age, during what In humans, Piaget (1955) proposed that the first landmark Piaget (1955) described as the concrete operational period. development of the ability to detect invariance and to reason This period is marked by the development of a new ability beyond the information given by perception is achieved by to reason about transformations of objects, and in particular the child at the end of the sensorimotor period with the the understanding that continuous and discontinuous quan- achievement of object permanence. Object permanence re- tities of liquids—their substance, volume, length, or fers to the ability to reason about objects that are tempo- number—are conserved independently of the perceived rarily out of sight. Prior to achieving this insight, children transformations. In their original work on liquid conserva- behave as if objects that have disappeared before them tion, Piaget and Inhelder (1941) presented children aged under an occluder (e.g., a cloth) no longer exist. This 5-8 years with two identical transparent containers (A and interpretation is based on Piaget's observation that children B) containing the same amount of liquid. Once the child fail to search for the hidden object under the occluder (but recognized the equivalence between A and B, the content of see Baillargeon, Spelke, & Wasserman, 1985, for a different B was poured and equally divided into two smaller contain- interpretation). With the achievement of object permanence ers. Following the transformation the child was asked at around 18 months of age, however, the child is described whether there was still the same amount of liquid in the by Piaget as behaving as if an object temporarily out of sight two smaller cups compared with A. Next, either one or continues to exist, systematically searching for hidden ob- the two small cups were further poured and equally divided jects in a variety of contexts. into two or four even smaller cups. Again, the child was asked whether there was still the same amount of liquid contained in all the small cups compared with A. Based on Josep Call, Department of Psychology and Yerkes Regional interviews with children in this experimental situation, Pi- Primate Research Center, Emory University; Philippe Rochat, aget and Inhelder described three general stages. At 5-6 Department of Psychology, Emory University. Some of the results of this article were presented at the 25th years of age, children demonstrate an absence of conserva- Annual Symposium of the Jean Piaget Society, Berkeley, Califor- tion, reasoning that following transformations into smaller nia, June 1995. quantities, the original amount is changed, either by becom- This investigation was supported in part by Grant RR-00165 ing larger or smaller. By 6-7 years of age, children show from the National Center for Research Resources. intermediary reactions, conserving up to the first transfor- We thank the Segals for their warm hospitality and Chuck Brady mation, but reversing their choices based on conservation and the Memphis Zoo for their valuable cooperation. We thank when the liquid is further divided into smaller quantities. Nameera Akhtar, Michael Tomasello, and Lyn Miles for providing Finally, by 7-8 years of age, children demonstrate neces- helpful comments on an earlier version of this article. The Yerkes sary conservation, inferring the invariance of quantity based Center is fully accredited by the American Association of Labo- ratory Animal Care. on the logic of identity, compensation, or reversibility. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to From a comparative perspective, it is important to know Josep Call, Department of Psychology, Emory University, Atlanta, whether this achievement is specific to humans. Can our Georgia 30322. Electronic mail may be sent via the Internet to closest primate relatives also reason as problem solvers in [email protected]. the context of a task requiring the conservation of continu- 219 220 CALL AND ROCHAT ous and discontinuous quantities? Only a few studies have cedure) has been attempted. Second, although both Wood- addressed this question using different methodologies. ruff et al. (1978) and Muncer (1983) suggested that infer- Czerny and Thomas (1975) have shown that adult squirrel ence rather than perceptual estimation was responsible for monkeys (Saimiri sciureus) possess at least the prerequisite their subjects' conservation responses, it is not clear for conservation, because they are able to provide accurate whether the inferential strategies used by their subjects same-different judgments regarding pairs of identical ob- entailed the logical necessity described by Piaget and In- jects differing in volume. Also, Thomas and Peay (1976) helder (1941). Third, the extent to which this reasoning demonstrated the ability of adult squirrel monkeys to make generalizes across different liquid conservation tasks and same-different judgments with regard to length conserva- across different individuals of the same species is also an tion tasks. Similar results have been reported with two open question given that previous studies have used a single rhesus monkeys within the paradigm of learning set training task with 1 or 2 subjects only. Of particular interest is the (Pasnak, 1979). Woodruff, Premack, and Kennel (1978) study of individual differences that may provide some valu- showed that an adult female chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) able information regarding the strategies used by the sub- trained to use plastic tokens corresponding to the words jects to solve the different tasks. Finally, the study of liquid same and different conserved quantity of liquid and matter conservation in orangutans adds a valuable piece of infor- despite a transformation of shape, but failed to show number mation to comparative cognition because to date, chimpan- conservation. The authors argued that the subject, Sarah, zees and squirrel monkeys are the only nonhuman animals based her decisions on inference rather than merely percep- whose performance on Piagetian conservation tasks has tual cues. This interpretation is based on the fact that she been reported. failed to correctly estimate quantity once the transformation The present research is an attempt to address these ques- had taken place without the possibility of exploring the tions by comparing the performance of a group of orangu- initial quantities. Furthermore, she was able to correctly tans (Pongo pygmaeus) and a group of children on various estimate the relation (same-different) between containers liquid conservation tasks. In the first five experiments, after some quantity of liquid was added or subtracted from liquid conservation tests of increasing complexity were the initial containers. Unfortunately, the use of same- administered to the orangutans. For comparison, the sixth different tokens to solve conservation tasks does not allow experiment tested children in the various liquid conserva- for an analysis of the direction of a difference detected by tion tasks used with the group of orangutans. We based our their subject, and therefore provided limited information testing of liquid conservation in orangutans on two behav- regarding the type of information taken into consideration ioral inclinations in these animals: pointing to request food by the animal to provide a different judgment. (e.g., Call & Tomasello, 1994) and preference for the largest Finally, Muncer (1983) tested two juvenile chimpanzees of two quantities of food (see Menzel & Draper, 1965). on liquid and number conservation. Only 1 subject mani- Orangutans can learn to request things from the experi- fested liquid and number conservation by choosing above menter by pointing at them with one hand. Furthermore, chance the largest of two volumes regardless of their per- when placed in a choice situation with two separate cups ceptual appearance. In the most stringent
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