American Journal of Primatology 64:133–137 (2004)

MEDIA REVIEW
Let’s Think it Over Again: A Neobehaviorist View of
Cognition in Animals

Review of Intelligence of Apes and Other Rational Beings by Duane M. Rumbaugh

and David A. Washburn. New Haven, Yale University Press, 2003, xvii þ 326 pp,
30 figures, 1 table, $35.

‘‘ywhy animals do not speak as we do is not that they lack the organs but that
they have no thoughts’’ (Descartes, 1646, cited by Edward Wasserman in The
Cognitive Animal: Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives on Animal Cognition.
‘‘General signs’’).
‘‘I am thinking therefore I exist.’’ (Descartes, Discourse on Method, 1637, IV).

THE BOOK IN A NUTSHELL

Radical behaviorists, such as John Watson and B.F. Skinner, have proposed
that the results of muscular activity alone are the proper data for understanding
behavior. In this view, all behavior is built upon unlearned processes that are
shaped into their adult form through respondent (classical) and operant
(instrumental) conditioning. There is no need to enter the organism’s interior
anatomy or physiology, or to probe any internal processes, such as thought
(assuming that there is any thinking going on in the first place). This view, which
is generally rejected in contemporary comparative, cognitive, and developmental
psychology, is elegantly rejected throughout this book.
Neobehaviorists, such as Rumbaugh and Washburn (henceforth called
R&W), differ radically from this view. They define behavior in terms of patterned
neural events as well as coordinated muscle activity. In their perspective, the
rational behavior of primates and other large-brain mammals is produced by the
sum of unlearned species-specific responses, operants, respondents, and emergent
novel behavior patterns. These emergent abilities are produced by the natural
activities of complex brains in detecting patterns, inventing categories that
organize perception and experience, and finding relationships among these
categories. The degree and complexity of emergent behavior is said to be based on
rearing experiences in environments that afford opportunities for variability in
experience and response, in the predictability of events over time, and in the
development of cognitive tools ranging from simple learning sets to facility with a
communication system, such as human language. The ability to consider past
experience, the current situation, and possible future outcomes to solve life’s daily
problemsFin short, thinkingFis a central process in this viewpoint. In support

DOI 10.1002/ajp.20067
Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com).

r 2004 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

134 / Gene Sackett

of rational behaviorism, the 19 chapters of this book are packed into five sections
that will entertain, edify, and sometimes mystify the reader.
But do animals think? If they think, do they exist in their own minds? What
would Descartes say about the following anecdote?

AN ANECDOTE FROM MY PAST, OR OUTSMARTED AGAIN

BY A MONKEY
In 1964 I was 1 year into learning about monkeys in Harlow’s Wisconsin
laboratory. In observing juvenile isolation-reared rhesus monkeys, I was struck
by their often clumsy motor behaviors, which included difficulty in picking up
small objects and often missing the handhold when they jumped to a shelf in the
playroom. Since there were no fine motor skill tests (other than pursuit rotors) for
monkeys, I decided to invent one. I spent a month on and off working on a really
cool machine, milling a series of ‘‘thimbles’’ out of aluminum stock. The thimbles
varied in height and width in a psychophysically measurable series. The task was
for the monkey to pick up a small saccharine pellet, with motor ability to be
measured as the smallest interior area from which the pellet could be extracted.
My first (and, as it turned out, only) subject was a large 10-year-old rhesus
male isolate. He relished the pellets and succeeded nicely at the task until he
worked on a 1-inch-high thimble that was barely wider than his index finger. He
tried to roll it up the side for a while, then screamed and hit the thimble a couple
of times, turned his back to the display, and sat in a corner of the test cage for
about 5 minutes. I was about to quit the trial when he turned around, directly
approached the display, stuck his index finger into his mouth, making it wet, and
stuck the finger into the thimble so that the pellet stuck to the finger. He then
extracted the pellet, ate it, and sat alertly waiting for me to rebait the thimble.
I ended the trial and gave up on my ‘‘motor skills’’ test. Neither before nor after
did I see any laboratory-raised rhesus monkey use its finger in this fashion to
obtain a food item. If the theory of rational behaviorism had been available to my
naı̈ve self at that time, I would of course have started on a career studying animal
thinking. Alas, I might even have had the good fortune of working with Duane
Rumbaugh!

THE BOOK IN SOME DETAIL

R&W define animal intelligence as ‘‘using acquired skills and knowledge
innovatively, to unique advantages in solving novel problems.’’ To justify this
definition and the existence of such skills, we are taken on a historical journey
through Rumbaugh’s 50 years as a comparative psychologist, with special
emphasis on R&W’s collaborative efforts involving computerized learning in
primates. We start with a five-chapter section on the need for rational
behaviorism. These chapters include a brief history of the comparative psychology
of animal intelligence; a treatise on adaptation, contrasting biological with
psychological smartness, ethology with psychology, and nature with nurture;
examples of creative problem-solving by many mammalian species; a review of
classical learning theory; and the limitations of operant and respondent
conditioning in explaining behavior outside of the strict control and limited
stimuli and responses of laboratory environments. Thus, we are told that the real-
world behavior of animals is most often composed of both operant and respondent
processes plus something moreFthe ‘‘more’’ being creative, novel activity. This
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leads to the main question in the book: What are the sources of creative and
inventive behaviors in animals?
The next section consists of three chapters that deal with the antecedents of
the rational behaviorism theory. The authors relate anecdotes from interactions
with chimpanzees, which provided Rumbaugh with questions about cognitive
behavior in animals, and studies at the San Diego Zoo involving comparisons of
rule-learning abilities in a variety of primate species.
Section 3 consists of three chapters on ape language learning. These chapters
are a must for any student of behavior, at any level, who is not familiar with this
work. The topics include a brief history of ape learning studies, the fascinating
story of the computer language keyboard and the chimpanzee Lana’s tutelage on
it, the social communication skills of chimps Sherman and Austin developed while
they learned the referential meaning of arbitrary symbols, and the language
learning exhibited by the bonobo Kanzi while it grew up in a linguistic
environment without specific language instruction. Kanzi is said to have learned
comprehension through observation rather than specific instruction, and
apparently developed an ability to speak actual English words in proper context
and in innovative ways.
Investigating rational behaviorism across species is the theme of section 4.
Here in three chapters we are presented with the basic propositions and evidence
of the R&W theory. This includes a cogent argument concerning why research
results are always constrained by the methods (including apparatuses) used to
produce them. Thus, it is crucial to ask questions about behavior so that the
animal subjects can provide the right answers. Most studies of ape language prior
to those of Rumbaugh and his colleagues were concerned with production. R&W
proposed that the right question to ask involves comprehension, not production.
They proceeded to teach comprehension to chimpanzees as the basis for
developing linguistic abilities through rearing with socially shared symbols as
referential vehicles for communicating comments, questions, requests, and novel
inventions that the learners dream up. Readers can judge for themselves the
success of this material in supporting the R&W argument for emergents as
‘‘learning about generalized patterns of events that may never have been directly
reinforced.’’
Section 4 also details the history and use of the Language Research Center
computerized test systemFa methodology that has revolutionized the field of
primate learning studies. R&W and colleagues developed a series of clever tasks
for this joystick-display screen computer technology. The results show that rhesus
monkey performance potential includes the same qualitative executive function
skills involving inhibition, perception, motivation, and attention that are
displayed by human children and apes. The section also includes fascinating
studies on uncertainty monitoring by David Smith and colleagues. In one answer
to Descartes, this work comes as close to proving the existence of animal thinking
as one might get without the use of querying by means of a human language. A
chapter concerning tasks in which rhesus monkeys fail is presented to illustrate
types of problems that are solved by monkeys using stimulus-response associative
learning, but are solved by apes and children (and ‘‘their larger brains’’) using
relational rules. However, I was not convinced that the macaque monkeys, who
probably do not know that they actually have a problem to solve, would not also
solve many of these problems relationally if they were also raised in a symbolic
(linguistic) environment from infancy. Section 4 concludes with a chapter that
describes clever experiments indicating that many mammalian species can make
accurate choices based on numerocity relationships. But, given that this skill
136 / Gene Sackett

appears to exist even in pigeons, it is not clear how numerocity perception fits the
R&W theory that relational learning requires a large and complex brain.
Section 5 presents five chapters detailing the specific propositions and
assumptions of rational behaviorism theory, and tasks and hypotheses that might
be used to test the theory. As summarized in the Introduction to this review, the
theory integrates instinctive, respondent, and operant learning, and emergent
processes in explaining how animal brains perform cause-and-effect reasoning to
solve the problems of everyday life, as well as novel threats to their well-being.
Portions of the theory are derived from older concepts. Stimulus saliency is a
central idea, and is defined as an environmental or internal cue of something
potentially significant that merits attention. Some stimuli are inherently salient,
often species-specific objects or events that require a response in order for the
animal to survive. Other stimuli acquire their salience because they reliably occur
together in space and time, and come to be perceived as a pattern that provides
information about a required or desired resource. A major piece of theoretical
news concerns reinforcement. Reinforcers are considered simply to be payment
for work performed, rather than events that in themselves strengthen responses.
Reinforcers inform an individual of a valued resource that can be earned. They do
not cause the animal to learn. Rather, they cause the animal to act and thus be
exposed to regularities in the environment, the effects of these regularities on
emotional states, and memories produced by these regularities during prior
behavior. Presumably, at least for some species and brain sizes, these regularities
can provoke thoughts concerning outcomesFnamely, thinking about the future.
So, what do animals learn according to the R&W view? They learn salient
relationships that predict the availability of desired outcomes or internal states
(e.g., food, water, pleasure, or relief from pain), and perhaps even gather new
information as an end in itself.
These latter chapters present details about the characteristics of emergent
properties, about what is learned over and above stimulusFstimulus and
stimulusFresponse associations, and about the role of rearing experiences in
allowing the maximization of emergent skills in a given species. I was especially
impressed with a relatively simple experiment on control that seemed to sum up
the idea of an emergent, the requirement of an environment affording varied
opportunities, and how an individual might maximize its potential. A procedure
called CHOOSE is included in the R&W computer test battery. The monkey
subject can play any computer game it wishes for 30 min at a time. It can do
matching to samples, shoot at targets, challenge itself with delay problems, run
some mazes, do some visual searching, or even work on a Stroop-like incongruity
task. Remarkable finding number one, at least for someone who has spent years
dealing with the touch-and-go performances of some monkeys tested with the
classical Wisconsin general test apparatus, is that rhesus monkeys will choose to
work on these problems for 30-min periods rather than having access to 30 min of
free food rewards. Finding number two, however, is my final answer to Descartes
in this review. The monkeys do better in performance when they can choose the
task than when the same task is chosen by the experimenter. Think about it!

SOME FINAL WORDS

This is an enjoyable and interesting book to read, even if you do not buy the
theory. It is also an informative book about primate learning abilities, even if you
do not buy the theory. It is a really good source for student discussions, especially
at the level of upper-division undergraduates. However, this is not a perfect book
 Media Review / 137

for the professional psychological scientist who is already knowledgeable about

learning, cognitive, or language research. Although R&W mention certain critics
of animal language and thinking ability (such as Tulving, Terrace, and Povinelli),
there is no in-depth discussion or refutation of their criticisms in terms of rational
behaviorism theory. R&W may believe the refutation is self-evident, or perhaps
Rumbaugh is too much the gentleman to say more than the simple chiding that he
gives to Povinelli. I believe a chapter on these critics might have been more
enlightening for both the critics and the average reader to better understand the
implications of rational behaviorism. In any event, I hope you have as good a time
reading this book as I did.

Gene (Jim) Sackett

Department of Psychology
University of Washington
Washington National Primate Research Center
Seattle, WA 98195
E-mail: Jsackett@bart.rprc.washington.edu