Tolerant Barbary macaques maintain juvenile levels of social attention in old age, but despotic rhesus macaques do not

Rosati, Alexandra G.; Santos, Laurie R.

doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2017.06.019

Cited by 25 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 91 publications

(133 reference statements)

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“…As a side effect, the individual gains more social information about its closest partners than other group members. Social interest is typically assessed with pictures 7 , acoustic playbacks 1 and videos 46 as stimuli or uses gaze following paradigms with human observers 57 . Here, we recorded the reaction of bystanders to spontaneously occurring social interactions among other group members.…”

Section: Scientific Reports |mentioning

confidence: 99%

Selective attention for affiliative and agonistic interactions of dominants and close affiliates in macaques

Schülke

Dumdey

Ostner

2020

Sci Rep

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Monitoring conspecifics is a crucial process in social learning and a building block of social cognition. Selective attention to social stimuli results from interactions of subject and stimulus characteristics with dominance rank often emerging as an important predictor. We extend previous research by providing as stimuli naturally occurring affiliative interactions between group members instead of pictorial or auditory representations of conflicts, and by extending to the affiliative relationship, i.e. social bond, between subject and stimulus instead of just their dominance relations. Our observational data on adult female rhesus macaques support the prediction that subjects pay more attention to affiliative interactions of others than to solitary controls. Exceedingly more attention was paid to conflicts unfolding in the group which can have more prompt and direct consequences than others' friendly interactions. The valence of the stimulus (affiliative vs. agonistic) affected biases towards individuals dominant over the subject, but not the ubiquitous bias towards close affiliates of the subject. Keeping track of the whereabouts and interactions of key social partners has been proposed as a prerequisite for behavioral coordination among bonded partners. In groups of socially very active monkeys, social attention is gated by both social dominance and social bonding.Vertebrates living in social groups evolved a suite of socio-cognitive skills to maneuver their social environment 1 . These skills include individual recognition, tracking one's own past interactions, monitoring others' interactions, assessing others' relationships, and attributing mental states to others. Such abilities are thought to place increasingly large demands on the cognitive apparatus 1 . Processes involved in the use of social knowledge are a) the acquisition of social information, i.e. information on other individuals and their interactions, b) the application of such information, and c) its exploitation 2 . Each of these processes is subject to phenotypic constraints leading to inter-individual variation in the use of social knowledge 2 . There exists now ample evidence both for the ability to individually recognize conspecifics 3 and for gregarious animals to take into account past events when making social decisions 4 . Therefore, the focus of social cognition research shifted to understand variation in social attention, in social information acquisition, and in how and when individuals monitor others.Social information can function as a reward and incentive for nonhuman primates in experimental tasks suggesting that the acquisition of social information is important 5-7 . Not all information is valued to the same degree however, leading to selective attention varying with traits of the subject, of the stimulus individual or event, or their combination. Social information is thought to be valued particularly high, if its acquisition leads to direct benefits for the attentive subject. Selective attention to less immediate, indirect or ...

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Section: Scientific Reports |mentioning

confidence: 99%

Selective attention for affiliative and agonistic interactions of dominants and close affiliates in macaques

Schülke

Dumdey

Ostner

2020

Sci Rep

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“…For example, gaze following (or co‐orienting with others) allows individuals to apprehend important information that others detect in their environment. While many primates exhibit gaze‐following responses similar to humans as adults, comparative developmental studies have revealed that some species may acquire this skill over slower timescales (Ferrari, Coude, Gallese, & Fogassi, ; Ferrari, Kohler, Fogassi, & Gallese, ; Rosati, Arre, Platt, & Santos, ; Rosati & Santos, ; Tomasello, Hare, & Fogleman, ; Wobber, Herrmann, Hare, Wrangham, & Tomasello, ), suggesting different developmental pathways that require more social experience in species with different social organizations than humans (Ferrari et al, ; Ferrari et al, ). However, it is unclear whether these findings concerning the development of social cognition can be extended to other cognitive abilities more broadly.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Heterochrony in chimpanzee and bonobo spatial memory development

Rosati

2019

American J Phys Anthropol

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Objectives: The emergence of human-unique cognitive abilities has been linked to our species' extended juvenile period. Comparisons of cognitive development across species can provide new insights into the evolutionary mechanisms shaping cognition. This study examined the development of different components of spatial memory, cognitive mechanisms that support complex foraging, by comparing two species with similar life history that vary in wild ecology: bonobos (Pan paniscus) and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).Materials and methods: Spatial memory development was assessed using a crosssectional experimental design comparing apes ranging from infancy to adulthood.Study 1 tested 73 sanctuary-living apes on a task examining recall of a single location after a 1-week delay, compared to an earlier session. Study 2 tested their ability to recall multiple locations within a complex environment. Study 3 examined a subset of individuals from Study 2 on a motivational control task.Results: In Study 1, younger bonobos and chimpanzees of all ages exhibited improved performance in the test session compared to their initial learning experience. Older bonobos, in contrast, did not exhibit a memory boost in performance after the delay. In Study 2, older chimpanzees exhibited an improved ability to recall multiple locations, whereas bonobos did not exhibit any age-related differences. In Study 3, both species were similarly motivated to search for food in the absence of memory demands.Discussion: These results indicate that closely related species with similar life history characteristics can exhibit divergent patterns of cognitive development, and suggests a role of socioecological niche in shaping patterns of cognition in Pan.

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“…One possibility is that age-related changes in behaviour vary across species based on these fundamental social differences. Indeed, rhesus and Barbary monkeys displayed developmental differences in the same gaze following procedure [26]. When group-living rhesus and Barbary monkeys were tested in a procedure to evaluate the extent to which they tracked the gaze of a human experimenter, there was a subtle, but not significant decrease, in Barbary monkeys' tracking of gaze across age whereas rhesus monkeys evidenced a significant decrease in gaze tracking across age [26].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interest in non-social novel stimuli as a function of age in rhesus monkeys

Bliss‐Moreau

Baxter

2019

R. Soc. open sci.

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Human cognitive and affective life changes with healthy ageing; cognitive capacity declines while emotional life becomes more positive and social relationships are prioritized. This may reflect an awareness of limited lifetime unique to humans, leading to a greater interest in maintaining social relationships at the expense of the non-social world in the face of limited cognitive and physical resources. Alternately, fundamental biological processes common to other primate species may direct preferential interest in social stimuli with increasing age. Inspired by a recent study that described a sustained interest in social stimuli but diminished interest in non-social stimuli in aged Barbary macaques, we carried out a conceptual replication to test whether old rhesus monkeys lost interest in non-social stimuli. Male and female macaques ( Macaca mulatta ; N = 243) 4–30 years old were tested with a food puzzle outfitted with an activity monitor to evaluate their propensity to manipulate the puzzle in order to free a food reward. We found no indication that aged monkeys were less interested in the puzzle than young monkeys, nor were they less able to solve it.

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Tolerant Barbary macaques maintain juvenile levels of social attention in old age, but despotic rhesus macaques do not

Cited by 25 publications

References 91 publications

Selective attention for affiliative and agonistic interactions of dominants and close affiliates in macaques

Selective attention for affiliative and agonistic interactions of dominants and close affiliates in macaques

Heterochrony in chimpanzee and bonobo spatial memory development

Interest in non-social novel stimuli as a function of age in rhesus monkeys

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