Abstract
Object permanence is the ability to represent mentally an object and follow its position even when it has disappeared from view. According to Piaget’s 6-stage scale of the sensorimotor period of development, it seems that object permanence appears in Stage 4 and fully develops in Stage 6. In this study, we investigated the ability of some species of monkeys (i.e. pig-tailed macaque, lion-tailed macaque, Celebes crested macaque, barbary macaque, De Brazza’s monkey, L’Hoest’s monkey, Allen’s swamp monkey, black crested mangabeys, collared mangabeys, Geoffroy’s spider monkey) to track the displacement of an object, which consisted of a reward hidden under one of two cups. Our findings showed that the examined subjects possess Stage 6 of object permanence. We then compared our results with data on apes and dogs participating in Rooijakkers et al. (Anim Cogn 12:789–796, 2009) experiment, where the same method was applied. The monkeys examined by us performed significantly better than the dogs but worse than the apes. In our experiment, the monkeys performed above chance level in all variants, but it should be noted that we observed significant differences in the number of correct choices according to the level of a variant’s complexity.
Highlights
Object permanence is defined as the ability to understand that objects continue to exist even when they have disappeared from view
In the present study using the transposition task, monkeys were successful in all variants, both in the case of a simple displacement of the two cups and in displacements with reverse swapping
Monkeys performed above chance level in all variants, they scored significantly worse than the apes examined by Rooijakkers et al (2009), except for Variant 1
Summary
Object permanence is defined as the ability to understand that objects continue to exist even when they have disappeared from view. If an object changes position, the subject is capable of mentally tracking the object’s possible movements. This ability is considered to be the fundamental skill of spatial cognition (Jaakkola 2014). According to Piaget’s 6-stage scale of sensorimotor development, it is only in Stage 4 that searching for a hidden object starts (8–12 months in human infants). If these children see an object in its first location and this is hidden in another place, they will seek it in the former location.
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