Los autores revisan la evidencia en favor de la capacidad de representación simbólica en simios, afirmando que todos los programas de lenguaje parten de la misma suposición: considerar signos, lexigramas y fichas de plástico como verdaderos elementos de vocabulario siempre que los simios sean capaces de ejecutar la etiqueta conductual correcta en presencia del correspondiente hecho u objeto. Consideran crucial el problema de la equivalencia entre capacidad de etiquetar y de representar simbólicamente y manifiestan que no se ha desarrollado ningún marco teórico dentro de la psicología animal que permita distinguir respuestas discriminativas condicionadas de respuestas simbólico-representacionales. Afirman que según sus investigaciones recientes la habilidad para utilizar símbolos de forma representativa puede ser alcanzada por chimpancés, pero no es posible deducir de la simple asociación entre etiqueta y objeto la existencia de esta función de representación o simbolización. También abordan la comunicación protolingüística de niños comparándola con la de chimpancés y desarrollan el concepto de verdadera simbolización, concluyendo que los estudios sobre el lenguaje de los simios han fracasado a la hora de obtener la verdadera simbolización en parte debido a que se han centrado casi exclusivamente en el aspecto de la producción, descuidando la competencia receptiva.
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