Like Humans, Chimps Can Plan for the Future: New Computer Maze Study

It turns out that chimpanzees may just be able to plan for the future, similarly to human children. While some species of monkeys struggle with planning, chimps come out ahead.

In this latest study, researchers assessed the planning abilities of chimps, two monkey species (rhesus macaques and capuchin monkeys) and human children. The subjects were given a computerized game-like program that presented 100 unique mazes to them and required them to move a cursor through a maze to reach a goal at the bottom of the screen.

"The chimpanzees proved to be quite good at the task, although monkeys showed more trouble with the harder mazes that required greater inhibition and more anticipation of future 'trouble spots' in the mazes," said Michael Beran, one of the researchers, in a news release. "These data highlight the capacity of chimpanzees-and to a more limited degree, monkeys-to anticipate and plan future moves in these game-like tasks, a prerequisite for more complicated types of future-oriented cognition."

The study itself found variability in the performance within each species and across ages in children. This suggests that a number of other cognitive processes may influence planning. Children were goo at negotiating their way through the maze, though older children were better than younger children. Chimpanzees were better at the task than both species of monkeys.

The findings reveal that like humans, chimps have the capacity to plan ahead. This reveals a bit more about these animals and may have implications for understanding the evolution of the human brain.

The findings are published in the Journal of Comparative Psychology.

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