ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies some of the key elements of imagistic cognition after criticizing the theory of concept abstraction. It attempts to illustrate the utility of this conception of cognition by using it to explain the combination of successes and failures observed in monkeys in tool-mediated retrieval tasks and in great apes in trap tube and trap table experiments. Martin Croghan-Ordas et al. discovered that apes who had been trained on the trap platform quickly learned to succeed on the barrier platform and conversely, but apes who had been trained on a platform with no hindrance did not as quickly learn either the trap-platform or the barrier-platform task. A population of 20 apes received three 12-trial sessions with the trap platform and three sessions with a version of the trap-tube test. Half experienced the trap-platform task first and half experienced the trap-tube test. Twelve out of their population of 20 great apes learned to solve the trap-platform task.
