SEEING AND KNOWING - KNOWLEDGE ATTRIBUTION VERSUS STIMULUS-CONTROL INADULT HUMANS (HOMO-SAPIENS)

Interest in cognition in nonhuman animals has inspired new approaches to discovering animals' ability to attribute knowledge to others (e.g. , D. J. Povinelli, K. E. Nelson, and S. T. Boysen, 1990). The assumpti ons of such experiments were tested in this study by training a group of humans (Home sapiens) to use accurate information provided by a con federate who was watching as 1 container among 4 was baited; a 2nd gro up was similarly trained to use accurate information provided by a con federate whose back was turned during baiting. On a single reversal tr ial, the roles of the 2 confederates were switched. Subjects were able to learn their respective tasks but attended to different aspects of the confederates, as revealed by the reversal trial. Although attribut ional interpretations can be applied to such data, many of the choices in this experiment can be explained more readily with the basic princ iples of contingency-based learning.