Date of Award
Spring 5-2018
Degree Type
Masters Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Psychology
Committee Chair
Alan Hajnal
Committee Chair Department
Psychology
Committee Member 2
Heather Hill
Committee Member 2 Department
Psychology
Committee Member 3
Richard Mohn
Committee Member 3 Department
Educational Studies and Research
Abstract
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.
ORCID ID
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5194-8211
Copyright
2018, Beri Brown
Recommended Citation
Brown, Beri, "The Conundrum of Causal Reasoning in Elephants" (2018). Master's Theses. 340.
https://aquila.usm.edu/masters_theses/340