EAPSI: Investigating inferential use of metaphors in chimpanzees

Schlegel Alexander, Hanover NH

Investigators

Abstract

Humans have the ability to flexibly manipulate mental representations such as images, symbols, and concepts. This ability may have allowed our early ancestors to construct new and complex social groups and tools, and today it remains vital to a range of human endeavors including science, art, and mathematics. A likely prerequisite to flexible mental manipulation is the ability to use metaphors, which involve mapping concepts between informational domains. For example, one can try to understand life by comparing it to a stage onto which one makes an entrance, performs for a period of time, and then exits. Metaphors underlie much of human cognition, but it is unknown if animals can use them as well. Previous work has shown that chimpanzees spontaneously construct conceptual metaphorical mappings between social status and physical space (i.e. dominant is higher, submissive is lower). In collaboration with Drs. Tetsuro Matsuzawa and Ikuma Adachi at the Kyoto University Primate Research Institute in Inuyama, Japan, this study will test whether chimpanzees can use such metaphors to make inferences about the social status of others. Specifically, the study will investigate whether a chimpanzee will later infer that a second chimpanzee is socially dominant if an image of that second chimpanzee is shown above images of other chimpanzees in an initial familiarization task. The test subjects' sense of dominance will be assessed by measuring their looking time while viewing movies showing the conspecifics from the familiarization task engaged in dominant and submissive behaviors that are either congruent or incongruent with their previously displayed positions. If chimpanzees can make this inference, then perhaps humans evolved novel uses of existing cognitive structures. If they cannot, then entirely new neural systems may be responsible for the unique abilities that humans possess. This NSF EAPSI award is funded in collaboration with the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.