Exploring attentional bias towards threatening faces in chimpanzees using the dot probe task

Wilson, Duncan A.; Tomonaga, Masaki

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0207378

Cited by 22 publications

(32 citation statements)

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“…Rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) showed attention biases towards threatening faces of conspecifics during the dot-probe task (King et al, 2012;Lacreuse et al, 2013;Parr et al, 2013). In contrast, chimpanzees did not show a bias for threatening facial expressions in a dot-probe task (Kret et al, 2018;Wilson & Tomonaga, 2018) but did so during a visuo-spatial cueing experiment (Tomonaga & Imura, 2009). Not only facial expressions, but also whole-body stimuli can bias attention in primates, and this can also include positive social scenes, as suggested in a study on bonobos which found a bias towards affiliative but not aggressive whole-body stimuli, which may reflect differences in the socio-ecology of the species as compared to the closely-related chimpanzee (Kret et al, 2016).…”

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Social and nonsocial stimuli alter the performance of bonobos during a pictorial emotional Stroop task

Laméris

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Eens

et al. 2022

American J Primatol

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The emotional Stroop task is a paradigm commonly applied in human studies to investigate how emotionally laden stimuli interfere with cognitive processes. Recent modifications of this task have enabled researchers to study similarStroop effects in zoo-housed primates. Across three experiments using a pictorial emotional Stroop task, we investigated if the attention of bonobos was influenced by social (facial expressions during play, conflict, and neutral events) and nonsocial stimuli (a preferred food item, predator, and flower). Four bonobos successfully learned to complete the task on a touchscreen. First, we tested the bonobos on a standard color-interference Stroop task and found that they made more errors in color-congruent trials. Second, we included facial expressions of unknown conspecifics and found that it took the bonobos longer to select targets with play facial expressions compared to neutral expressions.Last, we included objects and found that the negative, positive and neutral objects altered performance. Our findings show that the cognitive processes of bonobos are influenced by both relevant social and nonsocial stimuli. Specifically, play faces interfered with the bonobos' attention suggesting that these facial expressions form a salient stimulus within bonobo society. Nonsocial stimuli also altered accuracy and reaction times during the task which may be explained by their evolutionary relevance. Our results help us to better understand the (socio-)emotional competencies of bonobos and how they respond to external stimuli. Future studies can further examine how a wider range of biologically relevant stimuli interfere with attentional processes in bonobos.

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Social and nonsocial stimuli alter the performance of bonobos during a pictorial emotional Stroop task

Laméris

Verspeek

Eens

et al. 2022

American J Primatol

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“…For model averaging results tables, see Supplementary File_S3 in the online supplemental materials. Experiment 1: Intact Face Method Search asymmetries between three facial expression pairs were explored (Wilson, 2019). Scream or bared teeth targets were presented among neutral distractors and vice versa (scream-neutral condition and bared teeth-neutral condition), and scream targets were presented among bared teeth distractors and vice versa (scream-bared teeth condition).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…All faces were presented in greyscale, and the average luminance of each face was scaled to the average luminance of all faces in each experiment. This was to control for overall differences in color hue and luminance, which may inadvertently bias attention (Wilson & Tomonaga, 2018a). Images featuring 30 different individuals were presented, consisting of 10 different individuals per expression.…”

Section: General Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Search asymmetries for threatening faces in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).

Wilson¹,

Tomonaga²

2022

Journal of Comparative Psychology

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for their daily care of the chimpanzees. We also thank staff at Kumamoto Sanctuary, Kyoto University, for providing photographs of chimpanzees to use as stimuli. We are grateful to Dr. Hiroki Koda of the Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University, for helpful feedback on an earlier version of this manuscript. Finally, we thank Dr. Hiroyuki Muto, Kyoto University, for his comments on statistical analyses. Online Supplementary Materials; File_S1. Speed-accuracy trade-off analysis, File_S2. Response time and accuracy raw data for each experiment and R codes for data analysis, and File_S3. Response time and accuracy model averaging results tables for each experiment.

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“…We chose surprise because it is a visibly salient emotion that the apes likely observe less frequently, but that nonetheless clearly alters the appearance of multiple facial features and is one that, in humans at least, is typically correctly recognized [ 47 ]. Given the limited and mixed data for Pan [ 39 , 41 , 48 , 49 ], we did not have a directional prediction for how the apes would respond to these images. Lastly, (3) we paired photographs of familiar and unfamiliar individuals wearing a blue surgical face mask (with a neutral expression).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Familiarity mediates apes' attentional biases toward human faces

et al. 2022

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In zoos, primates experience markedly different interactions with familiar humans, such as the zookeepers who care for them, compared with those with unfamiliar humans, such as the large volume of zoo visitors to whom they are regularly exposed. While the behaviour of zoo-housed primates in the presence of unfamiliar, and to a lesser extent familiar, humans has received considerable attention, if and how they spontaneously distinguish familiar from unfamiliar people, and the cognitive mechanisms underlying the relationships they form with familiar and unfamiliar humans, remain poorly understood. Using a dot-probe paradigm, we assessed whether primates (chimpanzees and gorillas) show an attentional bias toward the faces of familiar humans, with whom the apes presumably had a positive relationship. Contrary to our predictions, all subjects showed a significant attentional bias toward unfamiliar people's faces compared with familiar people's faces when the faces showed a neutral expression, both with and without a surgical face mask on, but no significant attentional bias when the faces showed a surprised expression. These results demonstrate that apes can spontaneously categorize humans based on familiarity and we argue that the attentional biases the apes showed for unfamiliar human faces reflect a novelty effect.

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Exploring attentional bias towards threatening faces in chimpanzees using the dot probe task

Cited by 22 publications

References 71 publications

Social and nonsocial stimuli alter the performance of bonobos during a pictorial emotional Stroop task

Social and nonsocial stimuli alter the performance of bonobos during a pictorial emotional Stroop task

Search asymmetries for threatening faces in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).

Familiarity mediates apes' attentional biases toward human faces

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