Symmetry inference-that is, spontaneously deriving the stimulus association B-A from A-B-was recently reported in preverbal infants (Kabdebon & Dehaene-Lambertz, 2019, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 116[12], 5805-5810) and regarded as a "building block for human cognition." Here, we argue that empirical evidence supporting this claim is insufficient, and that absence of symmetry inference in nonhuman animals should be reassessed.
Keywords: Associative learning; Language evolution; Preverbal humans; Symmetry inference.