Serial Cognition and Personality in Macaques

Abstract

We examined the associations between serial cognition and personality in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta). Nine macaques were tested on a simultaneous chaining task to assess their cognitive abilities. They were also rated for personality traits and scored according to a previously extracted six component structure derived from free-ranging rhesus macaques. Friendliness and Openness were positively associated with good performance on three measures of accuracy on the serial learning task: Progress, Error, and Rewarded (i.e., correctly completed) Trials. Faster Reaction Times were associated with lower Friendliness and higher Confidence, as well as higher Openness when only correct responses were analyzed. We also used regularized exploratory factor analysis to extract two, three, four, five, and six factor structures, and found consistent associations between accuracy and single factors within each of these structures. Prior results on intelligence in other nonhuman primate species have focused on basic intelligence tests; this study demonstrates that more complex, abstract cognitive tasks can be used to assess intelligence and personality in nonhuman primates.

Data reduction analyses of animal behaviour: avoiding Kaiser's criterion and adopting more robust automated methods

“…If the analysis is wholly exploratory, or theories are at odds, there is nothing wrong with extracting multiple factor structures and comparing them when multiple extraction methods disagree on Morton and Altschul 12 how many to extract. Factor interpretability can be assessed post-extraction, and depending on what variables are of interest, investigating additional associations may indicate which structure is the most useful (Altschul, Terrace, & Weiss, 2016). As with any model, however, researchers must beware of post-hoc modification since greater degrees of freedom can hinder the generalizability of an analysis.…”

Chimpanzee intellect: personality, performance and motivation with touchscreen tasks

“…Chimpanzees who explored novel features of and objects in their environment also tended to obtain more rewards from puzzles than less exploratory individuals [13]. Assertive capuchins [14] and friendly macaques [15] were more successful with cognitive tasks, compared with less assertive or friendly conspecifics.…”

“…Capuchin monkey participation in two spatial cognition tasks was correlated with Openness, but while performance on the first task was also correlated with Openness, performance on both was negatively correlated with Assertiveness [14]. Rhesus macaques' accuracy on a serial cognition touchscreen task has been associated with Openness and Friendliness [15], but that study could not report on participation. Participation in cognitive tasks appears to be biased by personality [14] and may confound results, e.g.…”

A multi‐institutional assessment of a short‐form personality questionnaire for use with macaques

“…Given the ease with which we were able to collect personality ratings of the Japanese macaques from keeper staff across multiple zoos, we are hopeful that this new scale can be used at other institutions so that animal care staff can more quickly rate their monkeys’ personality characteristics. As researchers, we are also hopeful that these personality ratings can be used to assess the monkeys’ success in learning new research protocols (Altschul et al, ), and help inform our understanding of their welfare when participating in such research (e.g., Herrelko, Vick, & Buchanan‐Smith, ). If adopted more widely, ratings collected using this scale could also help inform whether there are group‐level differences in macaque personality (Bengston & Jandt, ) or whether there are certain personality traits associated with behaviors, such as aggression, which may be informative in efforts to understand wounding patterns or identifying individuals to introduce to one another (Coleman, ; McGrew, ).…”

“…For those charged with the care of captive primates, understanding primate personality characteristics at a species level, as well as developing a more fine‐grained description at the individual level, is vital because specific personality traits have been shown to be related to possible indices of well‐being, such as longevity ( Gorilla gorilla gorilla , Weiss, Gartner, Gold, & Stoinski, ), digestive health ( Rhinopithecus roxellana , Jin, Su, Tao, Guo, & Yu, ), and stereotypic behavior ( Macaca mulatta , Gottlieb, Capitanio, & McCowan, ). Furthermore, certain personality characteristics have been demonstrated to be associated with primates’ problem‐solving abilities ( Pan troglodytes , Hopper et al, ), their skills at learning and solving computer‐based tasks ( M. mulatta , Altschul, Terrace, & Weiss, ; P. troglodytes , Altschul, Wallace, Sonnweber, Tomonaga, & Weiss, ), and their willingness to engage in training for husbandry purposes ( P. troglodytes , Reamer et al, ). Ideally, then, the care of captive primates should not be a “one size fits all strategy” but should be tailored to the individual animals according to their personalities and individual needs (Coleman, ).…”