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Abstract
Object permanence, the ability to represent hidden objects, has not been extensively assessed in cetaceans and the available evidence is contradictory. Although bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) are thought to be endowed with cognitive capacities required to pass complex object permanence tests, they have failed a series of tasks involving invisible displacements, which raises the question of whether they do master object permanence. Lack of understanding of containment or lack of experience tracking objects hidden from both sight and echolocation may explain such unexpected results. The goal of the current study was to test these two hypotheses in a series of visible and invisible displacement tasks with bottlenose dolphins. Our results suggest that dolphins are indeed able to succeed in complex object permanence tasks but only if they have previous visual experience with the movements of objects inside other objects. Thus, these outcomes point to an important role of visual experience in the development of object permanence skills.
References
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