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Updated: Apr 25, 2026
Assessment of Social Cognition in Non-human Primates Using a Network of Computerized Automated Learning Device ALDM Test Systems
Published on: May 5, 2015
Primate cognition
Amanda Seed1, Michael Tomasello
1Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
Abstract:
As the cognitive revolution was slow to come to the study of animal behavior, the vast majority of what we know about primate cognition has been discovered in the last 30 years. Building on the recognition that the physical and social worlds of humans and their living primate relatives pose many of the same evolutionary challenges, programs of research have established that the most basic cognitive skills and mental representations that humans use to navigate those worlds are already possessed by other primates. There may be differences between humans and other primates, however, in more complex cognitive skills, such as reasoning about relations, causality, time, and other minds. Of special importance, the human primate seems to possess a species-unique set of adaptations for "cultural intelligence," which are broad reaching in their effects on human cognition.
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