Logical Structures of Young Chimpanzees' Spontaneous Object Grouping

I investigated sensorimotor precursors of logicoarithmetic operations involved in spontaneous object grouping of five common chimpanzees aged 1 to 4 years. I considered three basic logical relations between objects or sets of objects: equivalence, order, and reversibility relations. Chimpanzees introduced equivalence and order relations within sets of objects as well as between sets. They showed a higher level of logical organization than monkeys do. Compared to human infants, chimpanzees manifested a specific difference and a specific delay. First, chimpanzees only partially mapped the logical properties of their action organization on sets of objects. For example, chimpanzees' simultaneous acts on two sets of objects, though increasing with age, almost never resulted in spatial correspondences between the sets. Secondly, they showed a specific delay in that they produced scarcely any form of reversibility.