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Agent Preference in Chasing Interactions in Guinea Baboons (Papio papio): Uncovering the Roots of Subject-Object
Floor Meewis1,2, Joël Fagot1,2, Nicolas Claidière1,2
1Centre de Recherche en Psychologie et Neurosciences, UMR 7077, Aix Marseille University, CNRS.
Psychological Science
|June 6, 2025
Summary
Guinea baboons showed a preference for agents over patients in visual event cognition. This suggests that the agent bias observed in humans may be an evolutionarily ancient trait shared with other primates.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Science
- Primatology
- Linguistics
Background:
- Human language often prioritizes agents (doers) over patients (recipients) in event descriptions.
- This linguistic tendency may stem from a cognitive bias where agents capture attention more readily than patients.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether nonhuman primates, specifically Guinea baboons, exhibit a similar agent preference in event cognition.
- To explore the evolutionary origins of agent bias and its potential link to linguistic structures.
Main Methods:
- A change-detection paradigm was employed using chasing animations presented to 13 Guinea baboons.
- Baboons were trained to detect color changes applied to either the chaser (agent) or the chasee (patient).
Main Results:
- Baboons demonstrated faster detection of changes associated with the chaser (agent) compared to the chasee (patient).
- This effect could not be attributed to low-level visual features like motion or position.
Conclusions:
- The findings suggest that an agent preference is present in Guinea baboons, indicating this cognitive bias may be evolutionarily conserved.
- This shared mechanism between humans and primates could underlie the cross-linguistic tendency to place subjects before objects.
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