To Err Is (Not Only) Human: Fallibility as a Window Into Primate Cognition

Human cognition affords our species an excellent toolbox for solving problems.Many nonhuman animal species appear to share with humans some of these tools.However, human cognition also is fallible.Susceptibility to perceptual illusions, misrepresentation of probabilities, cognitive biases, faulty memory, and heuristics all present sources of error from which behavior is suboptimal in the pursuit of goals.Some nonhuman species share these perceptual and cognitive biases with humans.Examples of this are described for nonhuman primates, ranging from perceptual illusions to humanlike failures on games of probability such as the Monty Hall Problem.Sometimes the performances of nonhuman primates mirror those of humans, but there are exceptions.Given that other species do experience things erroneously and make errors in judgment, it is an exciting question of whether they also might generate any strategies to offset their fallibility.Two examples to suggest that they do are provided from research with chimpanzees.One is of strategic self-distraction in the face of tempting rewards in a delay of gratification task.The other is of information-seeking behaviors in different contexts where chimpanzees have different types of information.This research, and that of many other groups, shows the value of examining perceptual and cognitive errors across species, and how different individuals and different species may be equipped psychologically to deal with the possibility of these errors occurring.

Abstract licence: CC BY

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