The Conundrum of Causal Reasoning in Elephants

<p>Causal reasoning is marked by the ability to mentally reconstruct the missing part of a sequence in order to reproduce an outcome. While research on causal reasoning has been done with children, the results of the studies have been inconsistent. A standardized paradigm for comparative causal reasoning studies does not exist. Nissani (2006) investigated causal reasoning in a tool-use task with elephants and concluded that elephants were not capable of causal reasoning. The current study, a modified replication, yielded results that were not congruent with Nissani’s (2006) manuscript. Additionally, it was very unlikely that the Nissani (2006) study truly looked at causal reasoning or tool-use, and instead assessed a response acquired through associative learning. Based on the results of the current study, it appears that elephants are capable of a level of causal reasoning, although more research is necessary.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Level thesis:degree_level

Masters Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Year dc:date.available

2018

Author dc:creator

• Brown, Beri

Contributors dc:contributor

• Alan Hajnal
• Heather Hill
• Richard Mohn

• Elephant
• causal reasoning
• learning
• African elephant
• Asian elephant
• comparative psychology
• Cognition and Perception

Repository record dc:identifier

https://aquila.usm.edu/masters_theses/340

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:aquila.usm.edu:masters_theses-1371