Primate Research | Welcome
What makes the human mind, ‘human’? For several years now an important part of my research program has focused on how the human and non-human primate minds think about social problems. In particular, how humans and non-human primates learn from others. Below are some of the problems and questions we’re addressing in the Social Cognition Laboratory and through the Ape Mind Initiative in the National Zoo:
Evolution of Cultural Learning
This project, supported by a National Science Foundation CAREER Award to Dr. Subiaul for five years, builds on previous research on cognitive imitation in rhesus monkeys published in Science (2004). Using touch-screen technology, the proposed studies seek to better understand how human children and non-human apes (Gorillas and Orangutans) learn different types of rules and responses from others. The aim is to gain insights into what underlies human cultural uniqueness. Some of the questions that will be addressed by Dr. Subiaul and his colleagues include: What factors differentiates human and non-human ape imitation? Are species differences in imitation performance best explained by differences in how they copy different types of stimuli (e.g., motor, cognitive, spatial), by memory differences or both? Which of these aspects of the imitation faculty are shared with humans? Answers to these questions will elucidate the nature of imitation and its relationship to human cultural uniqueness.
The sponsored research will be accompanied by a public education program: The Ape Mind Initiative (AMI), which will (a) establish two post-doctoral positions for the purposes of furthering comparative cognitive research and educating the public about primate cognition, (b) offer students the opportunity to be interns at the National Zoo while participating in research and (c) present a yearly public lecture led by a renowned great ape scientist once a year in addition to daily research presentations at the National Zoo’s Think Tank by a research scientist (Post-Doc or PI). The broader impact of the proposed research and education program are three-fold. First, the AMI program will lead to rare educational opportunities for students from High School to Post-Doctoral. Second, because a large portion of the proposed research will be conducted at the National Zoo’s Think Tank—a world-renowned center dedicated to studying the diversity of animal minds—this project will have a significant impact on the greater DC area and the Nation as a whole. Finally, the proposed imitation paradigm, which can isolate different variables that contribute to imitation performance, has the potential to shed new light on the psychological and neural mechanisms mediating imitation in great apes and cultural learning in humans. [PI: Subiaul]
Do chimpanzee learn reputation by observation?
In a series of three experiments we tested chimpanzees’ abilities to infer from the observation of third-party interactions whether a (generous) stranger, whom they observed always giving food to others, and a (selfish) stranger, whom they observed never giving food to others, was more likely to give food to them. In all our studies we assessed chimpanzees’ preference on the very first trial, guaranteeing that their preferences were guided by indirect (rather than direct) experience. In two of the three experiments chimpanzees distinguished between the two types of donors: often times significantly preferring to gestur to the novel generous donor. These results recently published in Animal Cognition (2008) suggest that chimpanzee can attribute reputation by observation.[PI: Subiaul, Co-PI: Vonk, Okamoto-Barth, Barth]
Do chimpanzee reason about ‘capability’?
We presented 7 adult chimpanzees with 6 different problems concerning physical capability. To receive reinforcement, chimpanzees had to gesture to one of two experimenters. One of which was capable of given the subject a reward, the other was incapable of doing so. Within each study we varied whether arms or legs were required to administer reinforcement, forcing subjects to reason abstractly about capability as opposed to a rigid rule. Results current under revision in Animal Cognition revealed that chimpanzees alternated between preferring experimenters whose legs or whose arms were visible often employing contact and distance rules to guide their responses. None of the subjects accurately responded to both conditions, a result which suggests that chimpanzees do not reason abstractly about ‘capability’.[PI: Vonk; Co-PI: Subiaul]
Can chimpanzees make retrospective metacognitive judgements?
The Evolution of Metacognition Project is a collaborative program between Columbia University (H. S. Terrace and J. Metcalef), the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and The George Washington University (F. Subiaul) funded by the McDonnell Foundation. This study seeks to explore various facets of metacognition in monkeys, chimpanzees, and human children. Currently we are replicating results reported by Kornell, Son and Terrace (2007) in Psychological Science in chimpanzees. The task involves first making a response that varies in its degrees of difficulty and, without getting feedback as to the accuracy of their response, they are asked to make a ‘confidence judgement’ that in effect posses the question: “How certain are you that the response you just made was correct?”This research program represents that first attempt to evaluate metacognition in chimpanzees and the first to systematically compare the metacognitive abilities of humans, chimpanzees and monkeys using the same experimental procedures. [PI: Terrace; Co-PI: Metcalfe & Subiaul]
Chimpanzee’s attention to social v. physical cues
This study seeks to investigate whether chimpanzees, like human children, attend to objects that have been the focus of an experimenter’s attention (i.e., eye-gaze) longer than to objects that blink and flash (but are never the focus of the experimenter’s gaze). [PI: Okamoto-Barth; Co-PI: Barth, Subiaul, & Povinelli]
