Sequential planning in rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta)

Scarf, Damian; Danly, Erin; Morgan, Gin; Colombo, Michael; Terrace, H. S.

doi:10.1007/s10071-010-0365-2

Cited by 25 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…Other evidence collected using the SimChain paradigm suggests that macaques rarely plan their response more than one response in advance (Scarf et al 2011), consistent with an earlier finding suggesting limited planning in both macaques and chimpanzees (Beran et al 2004). These results support the view that non-human primates engage in cognitive tasks with a minimal reliance on queuing processes.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 81%

Rapid cognitive flexibility of rhesus macaques performing psychophysical task-switching

2013

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Three rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) performed a simultaneous chaining task in which stimuli had to be sorted according to their visual properties. Each stimulus could vary independently along two dimensions (luminosity and radius), and a cue indicating which dimension to sort by was random trial to trial. These rapid and unpredictable changes constitute a task-switching paradigm, in which subjects must encode task demands and shift to whichever task-set is presently activated. In contrast to the widely reported task-switching delay observed in human studies, our subjects show no appreciable reduction in reaction times following a switch in the task requirements. Also, in contrast to the results of studies on human subjects, monkeys experienced enduring interference from trial-irrelevant stimulus features, even after exhaustive training. These results are consistent with a small but growing body of evidence that task-switching in rhesus macaques differs in basic ways from the pattern of behavior reported in studies of human cognition. Given the importance of task-switching paradigms in cognitive and clinical assessment, and the frequency with which corresponding animal models rely on non-human primates, understanding these differences in behavior is essential to the comparative study of cognitive impairment.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 81%

Rapid cognitive flexibility of rhesus macaques performing psychophysical task-switching

2013

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“…SimChain completion utilizes a series of planned responses (Scarf, Danly, Morgan, Colombo, & Terrace, 2011), but apart from the pause before the initial response, wherein the chain planning pauses occur depends on the individual animal. We analyzed the first response RT for only correct responses, as well as the RT for all first responses, to search for speed-accuracy trade-offs (Prinzmetal, McCool, & Park, 2005).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Serial Cognition and Personality in Macaques

Terrace¹,

Weiss²

2016

AB&C

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We examined the associations between serial cognition and personality in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta). Nine macaques were tested on a simultaneous chaining task to assess their cognitive abilities. They were also rated for personality traits and scored according to a previously extracted six component structure derived from free-ranging rhesus macaques. Friendliness and Openness were positively associated with good performance on three measures of accuracy on the serial learning task: Progress, Error, and Rewarded (i.e., correctly completed) Trials. Faster Reaction Times were associated with lower Friendliness and higher Confidence, as well as higher Openness when only correct responses were analyzed. We also used regularized exploratory factor analysis to extract two, three, four, five, and six factor structures, and found consistent associations between accuracy and single factors within each of these structures. Prior results on intelligence in other nonhuman primate species have focused on basic intelligence tests; this study demonstrates that more complex, abstract cognitive tasks can be used to assess intelligence and personality in nonhuman primates.

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“…To determine this, mask trials were needed so that it would be clear how far into a planned sequence the monkeys would go at the outset of trials. Again, previous research has been unclear on this issue, with some studies showing performance that would seem to indicate that the entire sequence was planned (e.g., Kawai and Matsuzawa 2000), whereas other studies show much more limited planning, and mainly just for one selection beyond the current one (e.g., Beran et al 2004; Scarf et al 2011). Experiment 2 tested this in the capuchin monkeys.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As with the primates tested by Beran et al (2004), planning was limited among the pigeons, but still evident, as only one masked item was selected at above chance levels, and the shift trials also had the same detrimental effects seen in primates (e.g., Beran et al 2004; Biro and Matsuzawa 1999). In addition, Scarf, Danly, Morgan, Colombo, and Terrace (2011) reported that shifts of the stimuli in positions three and four in the sequence after choice of the first stimulus had little or no effect on performance of monkeys, further indicating that they were not planning the entire sequence of responses at the outset of trials. Thus, one might assume that these results suggest similarities across a broad range of species for this type of planning behavior, with evidence of only limited planning in a sequence task.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sequential responding and planning in capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella)

Beran

Parrish

2012

Anim Cogn

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Previous experiments have assessed planning during sequential responding to computer generated stimuli by Old World nonhuman primates including chimpanzees and rhesus macaques. However, no such assessment has been made with a New World primate species. Capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) are an interesting test case for assessing the distribution of cognitive processes in the order Primates because they sometimes show proficiency in tasks also mastered by apes and Old World monkeys, but in other cases fail to match the proficiency of those other species. In two experiments, eight capuchin monkeys selected five arbitrary stimuli in distinct locations on a computer monitor in a learned sequence. In Experiment 1, shift trials occurred in which the second and third stimuli were transposed when the first stimulus was selected by the animal. In Experiment 2, mask trials occurred in which all remaining stimuli were masked after the monkey selected the first stimulus. Monkeys made more mistakes on trials in which the locations of the second and third stimuli were interchanged than on trials in which locations were not interchanged, suggesting they had already planned to select a location that no longer contained the correct stimulus. When mask trials occurred, monkeys performed at levels significantly better than chance, but their performance exceeded chance levels only for the first and the second selections on a trial. These data indicate that capuchin monkeys performed very similarly to chimpanzees and rhesus monkeys and appeared to plan their selection sequences during the computerized task, but only to a limited degree.

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Sequential planning in rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta)

Cited by 25 publications

References 33 publications

Rapid cognitive flexibility of rhesus macaques performing psychophysical task-switching

Rapid cognitive flexibility of rhesus macaques performing psychophysical task-switching

Serial Cognition and Personality in Macaques

Sequential responding and planning in capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella)

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