Mecanismos cognitivos de aprendizaje social en chimpancés ( Pan Troglodytes): evaluación experimental a través de múltiples tareas

Identifier:  TDX:2440

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/TDX2440

Authors:  Riba Cano, David

Abstract:
There is currently a controversy about the nature of chimpanzees’ social learning. One of the main issues is focused on chimpanzees’ learning abilities and whether this species is able to learn directly from a model's behaviour (action copy) or otherwise learns indirectly through the consequences of the model’s actions (results copy). The aim of this study was to evaluate the ability to copy actions and /or results on a sample of 14 chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) from the Fundació Mona through 11 two-target puzzle box- with varying levels of difficulty. The individuals witnessed different sets of demonstrations under three conditions. 1) Control group, without information 2) results only, without actions (non-social information) 3) actions and results (social information). The demonstration involved both causally relevant actions and irrelevant actions, and, in addition, to assess the possible effects of the causal information, the box was presented in each of two conditions, opaque and clear. Each participant received eight trials in which they were given access to the puzzle box for manipulation. Subjects’ behaviour in each trial was assessed for (1) Type of manipulations, (2) Copy actions, (3) Success (4) Latency (5) First responses. For complex tasks the assessed of Copy of sequence order and the number and type of transitions between consecutive actions were added. An overall effect on social learning was detected in many variables. Individuals in the control group were less efficient than individuals in the experimental groups. Overall there were no significant differences between experimental groups, where individuals behave in the same way despite the kind of information they witnessed (social or non-social). Thus, they extract information mainly through the consequences of the model’s actions (emulation) or individually. However, the absence of action copy (imitation) was no total, some coping was found as well related to task difficulty and causal information, but only if the performance was averaged across trials.