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Science 1 December 1978:
Vol. 202. no. 4371, pp. 991 - 994
DOI: 10.1126/science.202.4371.991
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Articles

Conservation of Liquid and Solid Quantity by the Chimpanzee

GUY WOODRUFF 1, DAVID PREMACK 2, and KEITH KENNEL 3

1 University of Pennsylvania Primate Facility, Honey Brook 19344
2 Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia 19174
3 University of Pennsylvania Primate Facility

Sarah, an adult "language"-trained chimpanzee, made accurate same-different judgments on quantities of liquid and solid matter and conserved both types of quantity despite a transformation in an irrelevant property (shape). Control tests showed that she judged on the basis of inference rather than perceptual evaluation of the quantities. She failed to make accurate same-different judgments on the basis of number, and she was not tested for conservation of this type of quantity.

Submitted on May 2, 1978
Revised on July 26, 1978


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Neuronal population coding of continuous and discrete quantity in the primate posterior parietal cortex.
O. Tudusciuc and A. Nieder (2007)
PNAS 104, 14513-14518
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