Overview
- The peer-reviewed paper, led by Hanna Schleihauf with co-authors including Emily Sanford and Jan Engelmann, was published October 30 in Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.adq5229).
- Across five controlled box-and-treat experiments, chimpanzees favored stronger visual evidence over weaker auditory or trace cues and identified when information was genuinely new rather than redundant.
- In the most demanding test, so-called defeaters revealed earlier cues could be misleading, and the chimpanzees more often abandoned prior beliefs in favor of more reliable signals.
- Computational modeling supported the interpretation of rational belief revision and ruled out simpler strategies such as always choosing the latest or most salient cue.
- Data collection with 2- to 4-year-old children is underway and researchers plan tests in other primates, with authors noting sanctuary-based samples and task specificity mean broader replication is still needed.