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Related Experiment Videos

Rhesus monkeys attribute perceptions to others.

Jonathan I Flombaum1, Laurie R Santos

  • 1Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520, USA. jonathan.flombaum@yale.edu

Current Biology : CB
|March 9, 2005
PubMed
Summary
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Rhesus macaques demonstrate a key aspect of theory of mind (ToM). They can determine what a competitor sees, selectively taking a grape only when the competitor is unaware.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Science
  • Primatology
  • Neuroscience

Background:

  • Human theory of mind (ToM) enables reasoning about others' mental states.
  • Primate ToM abilities remain largely unknown, with poor performance in prior tasks.
  • Some macaques process social stimuli neuronally, hinting at underlying capacities.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether rhesus macaques possess theory of mind (ToM) capabilities.
  • To assess if macaques can infer others' perceptions in an ecologically relevant context.

Main Methods:

  • Rhesus macaques were presented with a competitive task involving two human experimenters and a contested grape.
  • Six experiments were conducted, varying conditions to test selective grape retrieval.
  • Subjects' choices were analyzed based on experimenter awareness and location.

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Main Results:

  • Monkeys consistently retrieved the grape from the experimenter who could not see it.
  • They avoided the experimenter who was visually aware of the grape's location.
  • This selective behavior indicates an ability to gauge an observer's visual perception.

Conclusions:

  • Rhesus macaques possess a crucial component of ToM: understanding what others perceive based on their gaze.
  • Competitive paradigms are vital for revealing ToM in primates.
  • Primate cortical cells may encode not just gaze direction but also perceived visual information.