Strategies used to combine seriated cups by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes),bonobos (Pan paniscus), and capuchins (Cebus apella)

The authors investigated strategies used to combine seriated cups by apes ( Pan troglodytes and P. paniscus) and monkeys (Cebus apella) using a protoco l reported in P. M. Greenfield, K. Nelson, and E. Saltzman's (1972) study w ith children. It was hypothesized that apes would exhibit more hierarchical combinations of cups than monkeys, given apes' language capacity, and that apes would seriate the cups more efficiently than monkeys. As predicted, a pes made many structures with the cups using a variety of strategies, and m onkeys rarely combined the cups. After a training phase to orient monkeys t o the task, the 2 genera did not differ in the strategies used to combine t he cups or in efficiency in seriating the cups. Success in this task sugges ts that sensorimotor versions of hierarchically organized combinatorial act ivity are well within apes' and monkeys' abilities.