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The Evolutionary Roots of Intuitive Statistics

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The Evolutionary Roots of Intuitive Statistics The evolutionary roots of intuitive statistics Dissertation Zur Erlangung des mathematisch-naturwissenschaftlichen Doktorgrades „Doktor rerum naturalium“ der Georg-August-Universität Göttingen im Promotionsprogramm Behavior and Cognition (BeCog) der Georg-August University School of Science (GAUSS) vorgelegt von Johanna Eckert aus Würzburg Göttingen, 2018 Betreuungssausschuss Prof. Dr. Hannes Rakoczy, Abteilung kognitive Entwicklungspsychologie, Georg-Elias-Müller- Institut für Psychologie, Universität Göttingen Prof. Dr. Josep Call, Centre for Social Learning & Cognitive Evolution, School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, UK Prof. Dr. Julia Fischer, Abteilung kognitive Ethologie, Deutsches Primatenzentrum, Universität Göttingen Mitglieder der Prüfungskomission Referent: Prof. Dr. Hannes Rakoczy, Abteilung kognitive Entwicklungspsychologie, Georg-Elias- Müller-Institut für Psychologie, Universität Göttingen Korreferent: Prof. Dr. Josep Call, Centre for Social Learning & Cognitive Evolution, School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, UK Weitere Mitglieder der Prüfungskomission Prof. Dr. Julia Fischer, Abteilung kognitive Ethologie, Deutsches Primatenzentrum, Universität Göttingen Dr. Tanya Behne, Abteilung kognitive Entwicklungspsychologie, Georg-Elias-Müller-Institut für Psychologie, Universität Göttingen Prof. Dr. Michael Waldmann, Abteilung Kognitionswissenschaft und Entscheidungspsychologie, Georg-Elias-Müller-Institut für Psychologie, Universität Göttingen Prof. Dr. Annekathrin Schacht, Nachwuchsgruppe Experimentelle Psycholinguistik, Courant Forschungszentrum „Textstrukturen“, Universität Göttingen Tag der mündlichen Prüfung: 24.09.2018 Preliminary Note The present thesis is a publication-based (cumulative) dissertation. It is based on three original articles that have been published: Eckert, J., Rakoczy, H., & Call, J. (2017). Are great apes able to reason from multi-item samples to populations of food items? American Journal of Primatology, 79(10). doi:10.1002/ajp.22693 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 Eckert, J., Rakoczy, H., Call, J., Herrmann, E. & Hanus, D. (2018). Chimpanzees consider humans´ psychological states when drawing statistical inferences. Current Biology, 28(12), 1959-1963. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2018.04.077 In the present thesis, I relate the contents of the three articles to a broader theoretical context, summarize the main findings, and provide an extensive joint discussion. The original articles are reprinted in Appendices A, B, and C. I served as first author in all articles and was responsible for (a) developing the theory, (b) designing and conducting the experiments, (c) analyzing and interpreting the data, and (d) writing up and publishing the manuscripts. My thesis supervisors Hannes Rakoczy and Josep Call, as well as my co-authors supported me with helpful advice and discussion throughout the process. I hereby declare that all parts of this dissertation were written by myself, assistance of third parties was only accepted if scientifically justifiable and acceptable in regards to the examination regulations, and all sources have been quoted. Göttingen, 2018 J.E. For Margarete Thank you To Hannes Rakoczy and Josep Call for choosing me to accomplish this project. I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to work with and learn from two such excellent researchers. Thank you for being a great supervisor-team, for trusting me and giving me all the freedom I wanted, while always offering me support and guidance where needed. To Julia Fischer, who opened the door to the “primate world” for me five years ago. Thank you for further supporting me as a member of my thesis committee. To Tanya Behne, Annekathrin Schacht, and Michael Waldmann for agreeing to be members of the examination board. To Esther Herrmann for giving me the opportunity to work at Ngamba Island and to the Leibniz- ScienceCampus Primate Cognition for funding my research trips to Uganda. To the Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary team, especially Innocent, Paul, Kyama, Byron, Joseph Kaale, Enos, Joseph Masereka, Amos, and Phillip for their incredible effort to give us the best testing experience possible and to Hategeka, Ronald, and Moses for special culinary delights. A special thanks goes to the sunset cruise-team for creating some unforgettable memories. To Hanna Petschauer, Johannes Grossmann, Sebastian Schütte, and all zoo keepers for enabling smooth and enjoyable data collection at the Leipzig Zoo. To Daniel Hanus for a fabulous collaboration. To Jonas Hermes for facilitating data collection for the human part of this dissertation. To Shona Duguid for being a great island companion, for your support as study helper, for your always on-point scientific feedback and your encouragement and infinite gin supply in moments of doubt. It was a pleasure to be stuck on two hectares for several months with you. To Dairon Rodriguez and Stephan Kaufhold for your highly appreciated help to chop the hundreds of thousands of food items needed for my studies. Stephan- your pellet-cutting-machine should be patented! To Sarah Placi, Michael Kriegl, Sandra Azar, Marina Proft, Dominik Eckert, Shona Duguid, and Antonia Bieber for proof reading parts of an earlier draft of this thesis and Bastian Lange for help with formatting. Your comments and suggestions helped a lot to improve this manuscript. To all my brilliant colleagues at the MPI EVA from whom I learned so much and who became good friends over the last years, most notably Alex, Dairon, Daniel, Lou, Marina, Martin, Matthias, Sarah, Shona, Sonja, Steffi, Stephan, and Suska. A big thank you goes to my family, in particular to my mother Margit Kohl-Eckert, for continuous and unshakable support, for always believing in me, and, most importantly, for the great food supply during the phase of writing up. Last but not least, I thank all my primate participants in Germany and Uganda, whose genius and lovableness have been fascinating me from early childhood until today and who are the main reason why I carried out this dissertation. Table of Contents 0. Abstract .........................................................................................................................................1 1. General introduction ......................................................................................................................3 2. Are humans intuitive statisticians? .................................................................................................6 2.1. The heuristics and biases approach ................................................................................................... 6 2.1.1. Representativeness ..................................................................................................................... 7 2.1.2. Availability ................................................................................................................................. 10 2.2. The frequentist approach ................................................................................................................ 11 2.3. The Bayesian approach .................................................................................................................... 14 2.4. The ontogeny of intuitive statistical reasoning ................................................................................ 18 2.4.1. Reasoning from population to sample and assessing single-event probabilities ..................... 19 2.4.2. Reasoning from sample to population ...................................................................................... 23 2.4.3. Integration of intuitive statistics with knowledge from other cognitive domains ................... 24 2.4.3.1. Integration of physical information ................................................................................... 24 2.4.3.2. Integration of psychological information........................................................................... 27 2.5. Conclusions ...................................................................................................................................... 29 3. The evolutionary origins of quantitative abilities ........................................................................... 32 3.1. Estimating and comparing quantities .............................................................................................. 35 3.2. Arithmetic operations ...................................................................................................................... 39 3.2.1. Summation and subtraction ..................................................................................................... 39 3.2.2. Understanding proportions ...................................................................................................... 41 3.3. The cognitive foundation of quantitative abilities ........................................................................... 43 3.3.1. Analogue magnitude system..................................................................................................... 43 3.3.1.1. Signatures and empirical evidence .................................................................................... 43 3.3.1.2. Analogue magnitude vs. approximate number system ..................................................... 44 3.3.1.3.
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