Counting as the Chimpanzee Views It
Sarah T. Boysen · Psychology Press eBooks · 2018
The initial training phase just described, consisting of the elaborated one-to-one correspondence task using static arrays, had been designed to address a pivotal principle found in every model of counting, known as the one-one principle. If our chimpanzees were to employ tagging as described for counting in young children, it would ultimately be essential for them to recognize the one-to-one relationship between representative symbols and the corresponding number of items in an array. In light of Sheba&s;s extensive training on counting, it seems reasonable to suggest that she was able to employ a counting algorithm such as counting-on, when first confronted with different, arrays placed in two spatial locations. The literature on emergent counting principles observed in very young children&s;s addition and substraction performance may provide theoretical support for Sheba&s;s performance on the functional and symbolic counting tasks. The functional counting task required Sheba to locate an array, encode its quantity, move to another location.