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Conserved evolutionary history for quick detection of threatening faces
Nobuyuki Kawai1, Kenta Kubo2, Nobuo Masataka3
1Graduate School of Information Science, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan. kawai@is.nagoya-u.ac.jp.
Animal Cognition
|December 31, 2015
Summary
Monkeys and humans show a similar threat superiority effect, indicating an attentional bias towards threatening conspecific faces. This suggests evolutionarily relevant threat detection systems in primates process facial cues.
Area of Science:
- Comparative Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Evolutionary Biology
Background:
- Humans efficiently detect threats like snakes and faces, implying evolved specialized visual systems.
- While primates detect snakes, their processing of conspecific (same species) facial threats remains unclear.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if primates share humans' efficient visual processing of facial threats.
- To determine if threatening conspecific faces are evolutionarily relevant fear stimuli for primates.
Main Methods:
- Visual search tasks comparing response times for threat vs. neutral stimuli.
- Utilized human and Japanese macaque monkey participants.
- Included non-face stimuli to control for general visual processing.
Main Results:
- Both monkeys and humans exhibited a threat superiority effect for facial stimuli.
- Monkeys responded faster to threatening monkey faces among neutral faces.
- Monkeys did not show slower response times for non-face stimuli among threat faces.
Conclusions:
- Provides the first evidence of an attentional bias towards threatening conspecific faces in monkeys.
- Suggests threatening faces are evolutionarily relevant fear stimuli for primates.
- Primate subcortical visual systems likely process a range of biological threat cues, including conspecific faces.
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