objects, even though the pair-wise matching of those particular objects had never been specifically reinforced. That is, after learning that A – B form a group, and that B – C form a group, she deduced that a photograph of C forms a group with the ob-ject A.76 The learned group membership of real objects had thus transferred to pho-tographs of those objects.
So why not grant the chimpanzees in the Yerkes and Kyoto laboratories a pictorial mode competence? Matching known individuals poses some implications for picture processing argued to occur in reality mode. Reality mode must allow for reducing someone in size, perhaps transform colour, remove the third dimension, and so forth.77 It is perhaps these types of “problematic” relations between the real world and the pictorial world that highlights sources for differentiation and helps the tran-sition into a more pictorial mode. But differentiation is only one piece of the puzzle.
When matching individuals to their vocalisations there is no referential requirement involved. Matching infants to mothers, or body parts to familiar group members, as for Java macaques in Dasser (1987; 1988, in Bovet & Vauclair, 2000), are also ex-amples of tasks that can be solved without really having to move beyond reality mode, although it must be explained how the identities of children and mothers and parts of bodies of someone you know can be retained in size-reduced, flat versions.
Especially when all body parts were attached to your friend last time you saw him or her.
But one does not really have to map the pictorial world onto the real world if one’s visual and auditory systems react and recognise the input directly, regardless of the relationship to the non-pictorial world. The only requirement is that one does not become confused by the potential oddity of the situation, and retains the identi-fication of the individuals in the pictures and sounds. One case of “magical think-ing” is thus the acceptance of the way things present themselves, even when they are incongruent with one’s experiences. If this requirement is fulfilled, incorporation of new experiences into one’s expectations on the world will occur spontaneously. The fact that a known individual seem to appear in two places at once will not become a problem. But, as mentioned, this is not synonymous with a fully pictorial compe-tence that allows differentiation and reference in the same act.
There is a possibility that “pseudo-pictorial” concepts can manifest themselves in tasks where confusion has worn off while the identity of the content is retained. But reality mode processing is still the source of recognition. A prediction would there-fore be that for processing in pseudo-pictorial mode the possible generalisation to abstracted pictures is more limited than it would be in a fully pictorial mode. Rather than through the construction and application of a general picture concept,
“pseudo-pictures” are incorporated as further exemplars of real-life categories. Refer-ence, the sign function, is embedded in the e.g. matching task rather than attached to a general picture concept. Such a task is probably even pivotal for retaining rec-ognition after initial “confusion” wears off, if the picture is not to become
76 Such transitivity is one defining feature of equivalence relations (e.g. Sidman & Tailby, 1982).
77 The flatness of pictures is perhaps less prominent when working on a computer screen than with physical pictures.
tualised and meaningless.78 Another prediction would therefore be that pseudo-pictures might only work in certain tasks, and only work for certain categories. A subject who can match individuals to their kin in a computerised MTS task might not necessarily be able to communicate with photographs, or the subject would per-haps continue to bite pictures of preferred food (without pretending).
Pan, the Kyoto chimpanzee who successfully identified individuals in photographs, had difficulties imitating the pointing out of facial features on a colour photograph (Kojima, 2003). This was attributed to a limited body image in chimpanzees, but implications from using pictorial stimuli cannot be ruled out. In a sequential MTS format task the sample constituted a human face with a human cut-out hand touch-ing the face in a specific spot with the index ftouch-inger. Then the hand disappeared and Pan, at the time 7 years old, had to touch the same spot in the very same photo-graph. In the first experiment two spots marked the matching and the non-matching areas respectively. It took Pan 30 sessions to master the task. The number of trials in each session is not specified but in the other experiments in the study they are more than 50. Pan thus perhaps needed over a 1 500 trials to grasp the task. Most failures were due to pointing to the non-matching spot. When the pre-printed spots were removed in the second experiment Pan needed 18 sessions to reach criterion. The same facial photograph was still used as sample and the correct area indicated with a photographic hand. Especially poor was the pointing to areas of the face that had no clear landmarks, such as the forehead and cheeks. When the comparison photograph was displayed on another part of the screen than the sample photograph Pan’s per-formance dropped and she again needed 30 sessions to perform well. Likewise when the sample or comparison photographs were rotated her performance dropped. The exception was the nose, which remained cantered regardless of rotation. If the sam-ple and the comparison were rotated in the same manner performance did not drop.
The above results suggest that Pan did not parse the pictorial face into subcatego-ries that could be retained in working memory. In a further experiment her response transferred to comparison photographs of two other humans than the sample, but when the comparison was a chimpanzee performance was severely impaired, except for when the correct area was an eye. The role played by the pointing finger in the sample is also questionable. Had Pan understood the application of a hand to a face in a photograph as a bona fide point, the task ought to have been easier.
In order to see what factors contributed to Pan’s rather poor performance a simulta-neous matching task as well as a task using real stimuli would be needed. Also, mak-ing sure that Pan understands the pointmak-ing gesture and can imitate its use is essen-tial. Kojima (2003) combined these three controls into one and tested if Pan could indicate on the computer-screen face where the experimenter pointed at his own face. “Do-as-I-do imitation” of a model is difficult to learn as such, but possible, at least when the response is made on one’s own body (Hayes & Hayes, 1952;
Custance et al., 1995; Miles et al., 1996). Responding on a pictorial representation requires that it is seen as such a representation, or at least as a comparable object.
78 Within a pictorial mode, on the other hand, context is always present in virtue of a picture being a picture and the expectations that this entails.
And then it is still subjected to the limitations found in live imitation. Kojima (2003) notes that when he taught chimpanzees to imitate pointing to their own body in earlier research, they tended to touch previously correct areas adjacent to novel target areas. Pan needed 19 sessions, which included correction trials, to reach criterion in the live model to photograph condition. Applying a stand-for relation to the pictures would arguably decrease the vast amount of learning in these tasks.
In the same way that a “symbol” can be used in a pseudo-symbolic way in (failed) ape language research, a picture can be used in a pseudo-pictorial way. Just as we expect a language competent ape to understand that also novel expressions are words, although the meaning is not yet clear, the picturehood of pictures is expected to precede their content.
Understanding a picture as a picture entails perceiving a commonality between all, or many, pictures. Experiencing the appearance of many pictures is thus crucial for forming a picture concept that spans across all those media that can contain pic-tures. This does not mean, however, that a chimpanzee that has only worked with pictures on a computer screen cannot acquire a picture concept; it just means that it might be limited to computer screens. When this ape has to transfer her ability to new media, it entails forming the picture concept again by discovering that marks on this new surface can do exactly what marks on a computer screen could do.79 While the dynamics between expression and content might have to be learned again, due to media-specific transformations, the referential part of the equation should arguably not have to be learned again. When we learn a new language we do not need to learn how words relate to the real world all over again.
The expectation on a true pictorial or symbolic ability is thus that it will transfer to novel contexts relatively effortlessly, whether drilled pseudo abilities have to be built from the bottom up all over again. The animal never really “got” the word or the picture concept.