Do chimpanzees seek explanations? Preliminary comparative investigations

During the past decade, considerable effort has been devoted to understandi ng whether chimpanzees reason about unobservable variables as explanations for observable events, With respect to physical causality, these investigat ions have explored chimpanzees: understanding of gravity, force, mass, shap e, and so on. With respect to social causality. this research has focused o n the question of whether they reason about mental states such as emotions, desires, and beliefs. In the studies reported here, we explored whether th e chimpanzee's natural motivation for object exploration is modulated by a cognitive system that seeks explanations for unexpected events. We confront ed both chimpanzees and young children with simple tasks which occasionally could not be made to work. We coded their reactions to determine if they a ppeared to be searching for an apparent cause (or explanation) of the task failure. The results of these preliminary studies point to both similaritie s and differences in how young children and chimpanzees react to such circu mstances.