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Comparative curiosity: How do great apes and children deal with uncertainty?

Humans are perhaps the most curious animals on earth, but to what extent our innate motivations for discovering new information are shared with our closest relatives remain poorly understood. To shed light on this question, we presented great apes with two experimental paradigms in which they had to...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Sánchez-Amaro, Alejandro, Rossano, Federico
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10231759/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37256872
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0285946
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author Sánchez-Amaro, Alejandro
Rossano, Federico
author_facet Sánchez-Amaro, Alejandro
Rossano, Federico
author_sort Sánchez-Amaro, Alejandro
collection PubMed
description Humans are perhaps the most curious animals on earth, but to what extent our innate motivations for discovering new information are shared with our closest relatives remain poorly understood. To shed light on this question, we presented great apes with two experimental paradigms in which they had to initially choose between an empty opaque cup and a baited opaque cup with rewards invisible to the ape in study 1, or to choose between a transparent cup with rewards or a baited opaque cup with rewards invisible to the ape in studies 2 and 3. We also presented young children with scenarios comparable to the second paradigm (studies 4 and 5). Notably, after the initial choice phase, we presented participants with potential alternatives providing better rewards than the previously secured options. Importantly, those alternatives shared some features with the uncertain options, giving subjects the possibility to relate both options through analogical reasoning. We found that most great apes were not curious about the uncertain options. They only explored those options after they were presented with the alternatives. Children, instead, explored the uncertain options before the alternatives were presented, showing a higher degree of curiosity than the great apes. We argue that differences between children and apes mostly lay in motivational dispositions to explore the unknown.
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spelling pubmed-102317592023-06-01 Comparative curiosity: How do great apes and children deal with uncertainty? Sánchez-Amaro, Alejandro Rossano, Federico PLoS One Research Article Humans are perhaps the most curious animals on earth, but to what extent our innate motivations for discovering new information are shared with our closest relatives remain poorly understood. To shed light on this question, we presented great apes with two experimental paradigms in which they had to initially choose between an empty opaque cup and a baited opaque cup with rewards invisible to the ape in study 1, or to choose between a transparent cup with rewards or a baited opaque cup with rewards invisible to the ape in studies 2 and 3. We also presented young children with scenarios comparable to the second paradigm (studies 4 and 5). Notably, after the initial choice phase, we presented participants with potential alternatives providing better rewards than the previously secured options. Importantly, those alternatives shared some features with the uncertain options, giving subjects the possibility to relate both options through analogical reasoning. We found that most great apes were not curious about the uncertain options. They only explored those options after they were presented with the alternatives. Children, instead, explored the uncertain options before the alternatives were presented, showing a higher degree of curiosity than the great apes. We argue that differences between children and apes mostly lay in motivational dispositions to explore the unknown. Public Library of Science 2023-05-31 /pmc/articles/PMC10231759/ /pubmed/37256872 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0285946 Text en © 2023 Sánchez-Amaro, Rossano https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Sánchez-Amaro, Alejandro
Rossano, Federico
Comparative curiosity: How do great apes and children deal with uncertainty?
title Comparative curiosity: How do great apes and children deal with uncertainty?
title_full Comparative curiosity: How do great apes and children deal with uncertainty?
title_fullStr Comparative curiosity: How do great apes and children deal with uncertainty?
title_full_unstemmed Comparative curiosity: How do great apes and children deal with uncertainty?
title_short Comparative curiosity: How do great apes and children deal with uncertainty?
title_sort comparative curiosity: how do great apes and children deal with uncertainty?
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10231759/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37256872
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0285946
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