Jordan,
Here's a recent abstract of an investigation into the powers of awareness of the most human-like animal on this planet, the bonobo chimpanzee:
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Anim Cogn. 2007 Oct;10(4):461-75.
Mental representation of symbols as revealed by vocabulary errors in two bonobos (Pan paniscus).Language Research Center, Georgia State University, 3401 Panthersville Rd, Atlanta, GA 30034, USA. heidilynphd@aol.com
Error analysis has been used in humans to detect implicit representations and categories in language use. The present study utilizes the same technique to report on mental representations and categories in symbol use from two bonobos (Pan paniscus). These bonobos have been shown in published reports to comprehend English at the level of a two-and-a-half year old child and to use a keyboard with over 200 visuographic symbols (lexigrams).
In this study, vocabulary test errors from over 10 years of data revealed auditory, visual, and spatio-temporal generalizations (errors were more likely items that looked like sounded like, or were frequently associated with the sample item in space or in time), as well as hierarchical and conceptual categorizations.
These error data, like those of humans, are a result of spontaneous responding rather than specific training and do not solely depend upon the sample mode (e.g. auditory similarity errors are not universally more frequent with an English sample, nor were visual similarity errors universally more frequent with a photograph sample).
However, unlike humans, these bonobos do not make errors based on syntactical confusions (e.g. confusing semantically unrelated nouns), suggesting that they may not separate syntactical and semantic information. These data suggest that apes spontaneously create a complex, hierarchical, web of representations when exposed to a symbol system.
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The telling phrase above is that "bonobos do not make errors based on syntactical confusions" -- which suggests that they don't integrate at all but, rather, that they memorize exact words and form crude and brute, single-step associations (perceptual ties so tight that they are immune from conceptual confusions). If some kind of an integration is required for the sort of concepts you mentioned above, then I'm at a loss as to where to find the evidence for that in the literature.
Would you either propose other evidence -- or agree that lack of such justificatory evidence is indeed problematic for the theme of this thread?
Ed
(Edited by Ed Thompson on 9/23, 1:30pm)
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