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Sauciuc GA, Persson T. Empirical challenges from the comparative and developmental literature to the Shared Intentionality Theory - a review of alternative data on recursive mind reading, prosociality, imitation and cumulative culture. Front Psychol 2023; 14:1157137. [PMID: 37901066 PMCID: PMC10613111 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1157137] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/02/2023] [Accepted: 09/28/2023] [Indexed: 10/31/2023] Open
Abstract
Humans have an irresistible inclination to coordinate actions with others, leading to species-unique forms of cooperation. According to the highly influential Shared Intentionality Theory (SITh), human cooperation is made possible by shared intentionality (SI), typically defined as a suite of socio-cognitive and motivational traits for sharing psychological states with others, thereby enabling individuals to engage in joint action in the mutually aware pursuit of shared goals. SITh theorises that SI evolved as late as 400,000 years ago, when our ancestors (in particular, Homo heidelbergensis) turned to a kind of food procurement that obligatorily required joint coordinated action. SI is, thus, hypothesized to be absent in other extant species, including our closest genetic relatives, the nonhuman great apes ("apes"). According to SITh, ape psychology is exclusively driven by individualistic motivations, as opposed to human psychology which is uniquely driven by altruistic motivations. The evolutionary scenario proposed by SITh builds on a series of findings from socio-cognitive research with apes and human children, and on the assumption that abilities expressed early in human development are human universals, unlikely to have been shaped by socio-cultural influences. Drawing on the primatological and developmental literature, we provide a systematic - albeit selective - review of SITh-inconsistent findings concerning psychological and behavioural traits theorised to be constitutive of SI. The findings we review pertain to all three thematic clusters typically addressed in SITh: (i) recursive mind reading; (ii) prosociality; (iii) imitation and cumulative culture. We conclude that such alternative data undermine two core SITh claims: the late evolutionary emergence of SI and the radical divide between ape and human psychology. We also discuss several conceptual and methodological limitations that currently hamper reliable comparative research on SI, in particular those engendered by Western-centric biases in the social sciences, where an overreliance on Western samples has promoted the formulation of Western-centric conceptualisations, operationalisations and methodologies.
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Garcia-Nisa I, Evans C, Kendal RL. The influence of task difficulty, social tolerance and model success on social learning in Barbary macaques. Sci Rep 2023; 13:1176. [PMID: 36670123 PMCID: PMC9860066 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-26699-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/06/2022] [Accepted: 12/19/2022] [Indexed: 01/21/2023] Open
Abstract
Despite playing a pivotal role in the inception of animal culture studies, macaque social learning is surprisingly understudied. Social learning is important to survival and influenced by dominance and affiliation in social animals. Individuals generally rely on social learning when individual learning is costly, and selectively use social learning strategies influencing what is learned and from whom. Here, we combined social learning experiments, using extractive foraging tasks, with network-based diffusion analysis (using various social relationships) to investigate the transmission of social information in free-ranging Barbary macaques. We also investigated the influence of task difficulty on reliance on social information and evidence for social learning strategies. Social learning was detected for the most difficult tasks only, with huddling relations outside task introductions, and observation networks during task introductions, predicting social transmission. For the most difficult task only, individuals appeared to employ a social learning strategy of copying the most successful demonstrator observed. Results indicate that high social tolerance represents social learning opportunities and influences social learning processes. The reliance of Barbary macaques on social learning, and cues of model-success supports the costly information hypothesis. Our study provides more statistical evidence to the previous claims indicative of culture in macaques.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ivan Garcia-Nisa
- Durham Cultural Evolution Research Centre, Department of Anthropology, Durham University, Durham, UK.
| | - Cara Evans
- Durham Cultural Evolution Research Centre, Department of Anthropology, Durham University, Durham, UK
| | - Rachel L Kendal
- Durham Cultural Evolution Research Centre, Department of Anthropology, Durham University, Durham, UK
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Neal Webb SJ, Hau J, Schapiro SJ. Relationships between captive chimpanzee ( Pan troglodytes) welfare and voluntary participation in behavioural studies. Appl Anim Behav Sci 2019; 214:102-109. [PMID: 31244501 PMCID: PMC6594403 DOI: 10.1016/j.applanim.2019.03.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/29/2022]
Abstract
Voluntary participation in behavioural studies offers several scientific, management, and welfare benefits to non-human primates (NHPs). Aside from the scientific benefit of increased understanding of NHP cognition, sociality, and behaviour derived from noninvasive behavioural studies, participation itself has the potential to provide functional simulations of natural behaviours, enrichment opportunities, and increased control over the captive environment, all of which enhance welfare. Despite a developing consensus that voluntary participation offers these welfare enhancements, little research has empirically investigated the ways that participation in behavioural studies may affect welfare. In the current study, we investigated potential relationships between captive chimpanzee welfare and long-term, repeated voluntary participation in noninvasive behavioural studies. We collected behavioural data on 118 chimpanzees at the National Center for Chimpanzee Care (NCCC) in Bastrop, Texas, USA between 2016 and 2018 using 15-minute focal animal samples. Additionally, we collected information on 41 behavioural studies conducted between 2010 and 2018 with the NCCC chimpanzees that involved exposure to a stimulus or manipulation. The total number of behavioural studies in which chimpanzees had participated over the approximately eight-year period was then examined in relation to levels of behavioural diversity, abnormal behaviour, rough scratching, inactivity, and locomotion using a series of regression analyses that controlled for rearing status and age of the chimpanzee at the time of data collection. Analyses revealed significant, positive relationships between the total number of studies in which chimpanzees participated and 1) behavioural diversity scores, R2 adj = .21, F(3,114) = 11.25, p < 0.001; and 2) rough scratching, R2 adj = .11, F(3,114) = 6.01, p = 0.001. The positive relationship between behavioural diversity scores and the total number of studies in which chimpanzees participated seems unsurprising, although we cannot draw conclusions about the directionality of this relationship. The result that rough scratching and the total number of studies in which chimpanzees participated were positively correlated is unexpected. However, rough scratching made up less than 1% of all activity in the current study, and as such, this result may not be biologically meaningful. These findings suggest that participation in behavioural studies is not likely to be detrimental to chimpanzee well-being, and may even be beneficial. Data such as these, which empirically investigate existing recommendations can help inform decisions pertaining to the participation of chimpanzees in behavioural research.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sarah J. Neal Webb
- The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Michale E. Keeling Center for Comparative Medicine and Research, 650 Cool Water Drive, Bastrop, TX, 78602
- Department of Experimental Medicine, University of Copenhagen, Blegdamsvej 3B 2200 Copenhagen N, Denmark
| | - Jann Hau
- Department of Experimental Medicine, University of Copenhagen, Blegdamsvej 3B 2200 Copenhagen N, Denmark
| | - Steven J. Schapiro
- The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Michale E. Keeling Center for Comparative Medicine and Research, 650 Cool Water Drive, Bastrop, TX, 78602
- Department of Experimental Medicine, University of Copenhagen, Blegdamsvej 3B 2200 Copenhagen N, Denmark
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Whiten A. Conformity and over-imitation: An integrative review of variant forms of hyper-reliance on social learning. ADVANCES IN THE STUDY OF BEHAVIOR 2019. [DOI: 10.1016/bs.asb.2018.12.003] [Citation(s) in RCA: 23] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/13/2022]
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Bono AE, Whiten A, van Schaik C, Krützen M, Eichenberger F, Schnider A, van de Waal E. Payoff- and Sex-Biased Social Learning Interact in a Wild Primate Population. Curr Biol 2018; 28:2800-2805.e4. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2018.06.015] [Citation(s) in RCA: 18] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/11/2018] [Revised: 03/23/2018] [Accepted: 06/11/2018] [Indexed: 10/28/2022]
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Watson SK, Vale GL, Hopper LM, Dean LG, Kendal RL, Price EE, Wood LA, Davis SJ, Schapiro SJ, Lambeth SP, Whiten A. Chimpanzees demonstrate individual differences in social information use. Anim Cogn 2018; 21:639-650. [PMID: 29922865 PMCID: PMC6097074 DOI: 10.1007/s10071-018-1198-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 18] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/03/2017] [Revised: 05/30/2018] [Accepted: 06/13/2018] [Indexed: 02/07/2023]
Abstract
Studies of transmission biases in social learning have greatly informed our understanding of how behaviour patterns may diffuse through animal populations, yet within-species inter-individual variation in social information use has received little attention and remains poorly understood. We have addressed this question by examining individual performances across multiple experiments with the same population of primates. We compiled a dataset spanning 16 social learning studies (26 experimental conditions) carried out at the same study site over a 12-year period, incorporating a total of 167 chimpanzees. We applied a binary scoring system to code each participant's performance in each study according to whether they demonstrated evidence of using social information from conspecifics to solve the experimental task or not (Social Information Score-'SIS'). Bayesian binomial mixed effects models were then used to estimate the extent to which individual differences influenced SIS, together with any effects of sex, rearing history, age, prior involvement in research and task type on SIS. An estimate of repeatability found that approximately half of the variance in SIS was accounted for by individual identity, indicating that individual differences play a critical role in the social learning behaviour of chimpanzees. According to the model that best fit the data, females were, depending on their rearing history, 15-24% more likely to use social information to solve experimental tasks than males. However, there was no strong evidence of an effect of age or research experience, and pedigree records indicated that SIS was not a strongly heritable trait. Our study offers a novel, transferable method for the study of individual differences in social learning.
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Affiliation(s)
- Stuart K Watson
- Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution, and Scottish Primate Research Group, School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK
| | - Gillian L Vale
- Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution, and Scottish Primate Research Group, School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK.,Department of Veterinary Sciences, National Center for Chimpanzee Care, Michale E. Keeling Center for Comparative Medicine and Research, UT MD Anderson Cancer Center, Bastrop, TX, USA
| | - Lydia M Hopper
- Lester E. Fisher Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes, Lincoln Park Zoo, Chicago, IL, 60614, USA
| | - Lewis G Dean
- Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution, and Scottish Primate Research Group, School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK
| | - Rachel L Kendal
- Department of Anthropology, Centre for the Coevolution of Biology and Culture, Durham University, Durham, UK
| | - Elizabeth E Price
- Centre for Behaviour and Evolution, Institute of Neuroscience, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
| | - Lara A Wood
- Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution, and Scottish Primate Research Group, School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK.,Division of Psychology, Abertay University, Bell Street, Dundee, UK
| | - Sarah J Davis
- Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution, and Scottish Primate Research Group, School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK
| | - Steven J Schapiro
- Department of Veterinary Sciences, National Center for Chimpanzee Care, Michale E. Keeling Center for Comparative Medicine and Research, UT MD Anderson Cancer Center, Bastrop, TX, USA.,Department of Experimental Medicine, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
| | - Susan P Lambeth
- Department of Veterinary Sciences, National Center for Chimpanzee Care, Michale E. Keeling Center for Comparative Medicine and Research, UT MD Anderson Cancer Center, Bastrop, TX, USA
| | - Andrew Whiten
- Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution, and Scottish Primate Research Group, School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK.
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Whiten A, van de Waal E. The pervasive role of social learning in primate lifetime development. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 2018; 72:80. [PMID: 29755181 PMCID: PMC5934467 DOI: 10.1007/s00265-018-2489-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 53] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/11/2017] [Revised: 03/22/2018] [Accepted: 03/29/2018] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Abstract
In recent decades, an accelerating research effort has exploited a
substantial diversity of methodologies to garner mounting evidence for social
learning and culture in many species of primate. As in humans, the evidence suggests
that the juvenile phases of non-human primates’ lives represent a period of
particular intensity in adaptive learning from others, yet the relevant research
remains scattered in the literature. Accordingly, we here offer what we believe to
be the first substantial collation and review of this body of work and its
implications for the lifetime behavioral ecology of primates. We divide our analysis
into three main phases: a first phase of learning focused on primary attachment
figures, typically the mother; a second phase of selective learning from a widening
array of group members, including some with expertise that the primary figures may
lack; and a third phase following later dispersal, when a migrant individual
encounters new ecological and social circumstances about which the existing
residents possess expertise that can be learned from. Collating a diversity of
discoveries about this lifetime process leads us to conclude that social learning
pervades primate ontogenetic development, importantly shaping locally adaptive
knowledge and skills that span multiple aspects of the behavioral repertoire.
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Affiliation(s)
- Andrew Whiten
- 1Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution, and Scottish Primate Research Group, School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, KY16 9JP UK
| | - Erica van de Waal
- 2Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Lausanne, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
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Abstract
By the mid-twentieth century (thus following the 'Modern Synthesis' in evolutionary biology), the behavioural sciences offered only the sketchy beginnings of a scientific literature documenting evidence for cultural inheritance in animals-the transmission of traditional behaviours via learning from others (social learning). By contrast, recent decades have seen a massive growth in the documentation of such cultural phenomena, driven by long-term field studies and complementary laboratory experiments. Here, I review the burgeoning scope of discoveries in this field, which increasingly suggest that this 'second inheritance system', built on the shoulders of the primary genetic inheritance system, occurs widely among vertebrates and possibly in invertebrates too. Its novel characteristics suggest significant implications for our understanding of evolutionary biology. I assess the extent to which this second system extends the scope of evolution, both by echoing principal properties of the primary, organic evolutionary system, and going beyond it in significant ways. This is well established in human cultural evolution; here, I address animal cultures more generally. The further major, and related, question concerns the extent to which the consequences of widespread animal cultural transmission interact with the primary, genetically based inheritance systems, shaping organic evolution.
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Affiliation(s)
- Andrew Whiten
- Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution, School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrews KY16 9JP, UK
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Abstract
Discoveries about the cultures and cultural capacities of the great apes have played a leading role in the recognition emerging in recent decades that cultural inheritance can be a significant factor in the lives not only of humans but also of nonhuman animals. This prominence derives in part from these primates being those with whom we share the most recent common ancestry, thus offering clues to the origins of our own thoroughgoing reliance on cumulative cultural achievements. In addition, the intense research focus on these species has spawned an unprecedented diversity of complementary methodological approaches, the results of which suggest that cultural phenomena pervade the lives of these apes, with potentially major implications for their broader evolutionary biology. Here I review what this extremely broad array of observational and experimental methodologies has taught us about the cultural lives of chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans and consider the ways in which this knowledge extends our wider understanding of primate biology and the processes of adaptation and evolution that shape it. I address these issues first by evaluating the extent to which the results of cultural inheritance echo a suite of core principles that underlie organic Darwinian evolution but also extend them in new ways and then by assessing the principal causal interactions between the primary, genetically based organic processes of evolution and the secondary system of cultural inheritance that is based on social learning from others.
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Abstract
A few decades ago, we knew next to nothing about the behavior of our closest animal relative, the chimpanzee, but long-term field studies have since revealed an undreamed-of richness in the diversity of their cultural traditions across Africa. These discoveries have been complemented by a substantial suite of experimental studies, now bridging to the wild through field experiments. These field and experimental studies, particularly those in which direct chimpanzee-child comparisons have been made, delineate a growing set of commonalities between the phenomena of social learning and culture in the lives of chimpanzees and humans. These commonalities in social learning inform our understanding of the evolutionary roots of the cultural propensities the species share. At the same time, such comparisons throw into clearer relief the unique features of the distinctive human capacity for cumulative cultural evolution, and new research has begun to probe the key psychological attributes that may explain it.
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Affiliation(s)
- Andrew Whiten
- Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution, School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews KY16 9JP, United Kingdom;
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11
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Vale GL, Davis SJ, van de Waal E, Schapiro SJ, Lambeth SP, Whiten A. Lack of conformity to new local dietary preferences in migrating captive chimpanzees. Anim Behav 2017; 124:135-144. [PMID: 29200465 DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2016.12.007] [Citation(s) in RCA: 23] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/30/2022]
Abstract
Conformity to the behavioural preferences of others can have powerful effects on intragroup behavioural homogeneity in humans, but evidence in animals remains minimal. In this study, we took advantage of circumstances in which individuals or pairs of captive chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes, were 'migrated' between groups, to investigate whether immigrants would conform to a new dietary population preference experienced in the group they entered, an effect suggested by recent fieldwork. Such 'migratory-minority' chimpanzees were trained to avoid one of two differently coloured foods made unpalatable, before 'migrating' to, and then observing, a 'local-majority' group consume a different food colour. Both migratory-minority and local-majority chimpanzees displayed social learning, spending significantly more time consuming the previously unpalatable, but instead now edible, food, than did control chimpanzees who did not see immigrants eat this food, nor emigrate themselves. However, following the migration of migratory-minority chimpanzees, these control individuals and the local-majority chimpanzees tended to rely primarily upon personal information, consuming first the food they had earlier learned was palatable before sampling the alternative. Thus, chimpanzees did not engage in conformity in the context we tested; instead seeing others eat a previously unpalatable food led to socially learned and adaptive re-exploration of this now-safe option in both minority and majority participants.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gillian L Vale
- Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution, and Scottish Primate Research Group, School of Psychology & Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, U.K.,National Center for Chimpanzee Care, Department of Veterinary Sciences, Michale E. Keeling Center for Comparative Medicine and Research, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Bastrop, TX, U.S.A
| | - Sarah J Davis
- Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution, and Scottish Primate Research Group, School of Psychology & Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, U.K.,National Center for Chimpanzee Care, Department of Veterinary Sciences, Michale E. Keeling Center for Comparative Medicine and Research, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Bastrop, TX, U.S.A
| | - Erica van de Waal
- Anthropological Institute and Museum, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
| | - Steven J Schapiro
- National Center for Chimpanzee Care, Department of Veterinary Sciences, Michale E. Keeling Center for Comparative Medicine and Research, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Bastrop, TX, U.S.A
| | - Susan P Lambeth
- National Center for Chimpanzee Care, Department of Veterinary Sciences, Michale E. Keeling Center for Comparative Medicine and Research, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Bastrop, TX, U.S.A
| | - Andrew Whiten
- Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution, and Scottish Primate Research Group, School of Psychology & Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, U.K
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