The capacity for logical inference is a critical aspect of human learning, reasoning, and decision-making. One important logical inference is the disjunctive syllogism: given A or B, if not A, then B. Although the explicit formation of this logic requires symbolic thought, previous work has shown that nonhuman animals are capable of reasoning by exclusion, one aspect of the disjunctive syllogism (e.g., not A = avoid empty). However, it is unknown whether nonhuman animals are capable of the deductive aspects of a disjunctive syllogism (the dependent relation between A and B and the inference that "if not A, then B" must be true). Here, we used a food-choice task to test whether monkeys can reason through an entire disjunctive syllogism. Our results show that monkeys do have this capacity. Therefore, the capacity is not unique to humans and does not require language.

中文翻译：

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通过猴子的析取三段论进行推理

逻辑推理能力是人类学习、推理和决策的一个关键方面。一个重要的逻辑推理是析取三段论：给定 A 或 B，如果不是 A，则 B。虽然这种逻辑的明确形成需要符号思维，但以前的工作表明，非人类动物能够通过排除进行推理，这是该逻辑的一个方面。析取三段论（例如，not A = 避免空）。然而，尚不清楚非人类动物是否能够进行析取三段论的演绎方面（A 和 B 之间的依赖关系以及“如果不是 A，则 B”必须为真的推论）。在这里，我们使用食物选择任务来测试猴子是否可以通过整个析取三段论进行推理。我们的研究结果表明，猴子确实有这种能力。所以，