Delaying gratification for food and tokens in capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes): when quantity is salient, symbolic stimuli do not improve performance

Evans, Theodore A.; Beran, Michael J.; Paglieri, Fabio; Addessi, Elsa

doi:10.1007/s10071-012-0482-1

Cited by 72 publications

(101 citation statements)

References 43 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Previous studies have shown that chimpanzees are willing to wait longer for rewards of increasing relative amount [22], but can exhibit similar levels of patience for different types of rewards when their amounts are constant (e.g. choosing to delay gratification for larger amounts of food, compared with delaying for the same quantities of tokens [23]). However, it is unknown if chimpanzees would exhibit greater patience when faced with decisions about minimally cooked foods compared with the same quantity of raw food.…”

Section: Experiments 2: Patience When Waiting For Cooked Foodmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cognitive capacities for cooking in chimpanzees

Warneken

Rosati

2015

Proc. R. Soc. B.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The transition to a cooked diet represents an important shift in human ecology and evolution. Cooking requires a set of sophisticated cognitive abilities, including causal reasoning, self-control and anticipatory planning. Do humans uniquely possess the cognitive capacities needed to cook food? We address whether one of humans' closest relatives, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), possess the domain-general cognitive skills needed to cook. Across nine studies, we show that chimpanzees: (i) prefer cooked foods; (ii) comprehend the transformation of raw food that occurs when cooking, and generalize this causal understanding to new contexts; (iii) will pay temporal costs to acquire cooked foods; (iv) are willing to actively give up possession of raw foods in order to transform them; and (v) can transport raw food as well as save their raw food in anticipation of future opportunities to cook. Together, our results indicate that several of the fundamental psychological abilities necessary to engage in cooking may have been shared with the last common ancestor of apes and humans, predating the control of fire.

show abstract

Section: Experiments 2: Patience When Waiting For Cooked Foodmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cognitive capacities for cooking in chimpanzees

Warneken

Rosati

2015

Proc. R. Soc. B.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Monkeys also chose the PVC objects more than the metallic ones. Although both metal and PVC are materials the monkeys frequently encounter (their housing and enrichment is made of both materials), the PVC tokens were more similar in form to experimental tokens used routinely in our lab (e.g., Brosnan et al, 2011;Evans et al, 2012), which may explain their preference. Unfortunately, this preference for PVC could mean that their preference for certain materials overrode any preference based on their partner's choice.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…One female subject often chose not to participate (i.e., did not enter the testing area on more than half of the opportunities that she had to do so) and so was dropped from testing, resulting in a sample size of 10 individuals. Prior to this study, all of our subjects had participated in studies that involved exchanging objects with an experimenter (e.g., Brosnan et al, 2011;Evans, Beran, Paglieri, & Addessi, 2012). Subjects were always housed with their social groups except when they separated voluntarily for non-invasive behavioral and cognitive testing.…”

Section: Subjects and Housingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do nonhuman primates ascribe goals to the choices of conspecifics?

Prétôt¹,

Weiss²,

Brosnan³

2018

AB&C

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

-Numerous studies have investigated the extent to which nonhuman primates understand the goals of a partner. One limitation common to many of these studies, however, has been that animals are often required to interpret actions of heterospecifics, typically human experimenters. In this study, we tested capuchin monkeys' understanding of goal-directed actions by examining whether they would choose similarly after watching a volitional versus forced choice by a conspecific. In the task, a model subject chose between two different objects in view of a focal subject, after which the focal was presented with the same choice. In the Free Choice condition, the two objects were at equal distance and within reach of the model, whereas in the Limited Choice condition, one object was placed out of the model's reach. In Study 1, using objects that differed in material, size, shape and color, monkeys showed little evidence of copying the partner in the Free Choice condition; however, they chose the different object more often in the Limited Choice relative to the Free Choice condition. To try to rule out that these results were due to a preference for some feature of the objects, in Study 2, the objects differed only in color and pattern. Although subjects did not copy the partner more in the Free Choice condition, some showed, as in Study 1, a preference for the different object in the Limited Choice condition. These results weakly support the hypothesis that monkeys perceive volitional actions in a social learning context, in that individuals adapted their behavior based on the partner's choice in the task. We discuss the implications of the 'failure' to select the same object as the conspecific in the task.

show abstract

“…Monkeys show more variable performances on accumulation tasks and other delay of gratification tasks (e.g., Addessi et al, 2013;Anderson, Kuroshima, & Fujita, 2010;Evans & Beran, 2007b;Evans, Beran, Paglieri, & Addessi, 2012;Pelé, Micheletta, Uhlrich, Thierry, & Dufour, 2011). Showing self-control through delay of gratification also can be incredibly difficult for humans, with failures in the form of overeating, smoking, drug use, and inadequate financial savings all leading to highly negative future outcomes.…”

Section: Dealing With Fallibility: Strategic Delay Of Gratificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

To Err Is (Not Only) Human: Fallibility as a Window Into Primate Cognition

Beran¹

2017

CCBR

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Human cognition affords our species an excellent toolbox for solving problems. Many nonhuman animal species appear to share with humans some of these tools. However, human cognition also is fallible. Susceptibility to perceptual illusions, misrepresentation of probabilities, cognitive biases, faulty memory, and heuristics all present sources of error from which behavior is suboptimal in the pursuit of goals. Some nonhuman species share these perceptual and cognitive biases with humans. Examples of this are described for nonhuman primates, ranging from perceptual illusions to humanlike failures on games of probability such as the Monty Hall Problem. Sometimes the performances of nonhuman primates mirror those of humans, but there are exceptions. Given that other species do experience things erroneously and make errors in judgment, it is an exciting question of whether they also might generate any strategies to offset their fallibility. Two examples to suggest that they do are provided from research with chimpanzees. One is of strategic self-distraction in the face of tempting rewards in a delay of gratification task. The other is of information-seeking behaviors in different contexts where chimpanzees have different types of information. This research, and that of many other groups, shows the value of examining perceptual and cognitive errors across species, and how different individuals and different species may be equipped psychologically to deal with the possibility of these errors occurring. Keywords: primate cognition, perception, illusions, self-control, metacognition IntroductionThe 20th century saw a shift in how humans thought about nonhuman animals (hereafter, animals), their behavior, and the cognitive processes that might underlie their behavior. Comparative cognition emerged as a strong discipline in the second half of the century, largely as a result of the broader cognitive revolution in human psychology, continued developments in ethology, and new opportunities to study a diverse range of species (Shettleworth, 2010). Earlier comparative psychologists certainly took an interest in aspects of cognition (see Dewsbury, 1984Dewsbury, , 2000Dewsbury, , 2013, but researchers in the second half of the century provided new approaches to understanding animal minds. Initially these approaches focused largely on traditional aspects of human cognitive psychology, including memory, perceptual capacities, and learning phenomenon (e.g., Honig & Fetterman, 1992;Hulse, Fowler, & Honig, 1978;Roitblat, Bever, & Terrace, 1984), as they might reflect the use of mental representations and other information-processing approaches for interacting with the world. Later, 58COMPARATIVE COGNITION & BEHAVIOR REVIEWS Beran research increasingly focused on questions that covered nearly every topic found in a human cognitive psychology textbook, and even questions that were not typically discussed in such sources (e.g., theory of mind, deception, mind reading, cooperative decision making, metacognition, mental time travel, and ot...

show abstract

Delaying gratification for food and tokens in capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes): when quantity is salient, symbolic stimuli do not improve performance

Cited by 72 publications

References 43 publications

Cognitive capacities for cooking in chimpanzees

Cognitive capacities for cooking in chimpanzees

Do nonhuman primates ascribe goals to the choices of conspecifics?

To Err Is (Not Only) Human: Fallibility as a Window Into Primate Cognition

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About