Primate Social Cognition
Social cognition refers to the processes whereby individuals come to understand about their social environment and individual relationships. Human studies often refer to social cognition as understanding about the minds and thoughts of conspecifics, something referred to as theory of mind. But, social cognition involves many different components, all of which are necessary for understanding social complexity and maintaining social cohesion. Important components of social cognition include:
- Recognizing members of your own species, and more specifically your social group. This is done primarily through visual modes, face recognition, or auditory modes, vocal perception.
- Being able to discriminate and understand the basic function/meaning of social signals, like facial expressions, specific vocalizations, gestures and postures of the individuals within the social group.
- Memory for specific social events, including keeping track of friends vs foe and relatives vs strangers: memory is important because these relationships can change many times throughout the lifetime.
- Basic understanding of social context and how it can change and influence behavior. Behaviors that are appropriate during feeding might not be appropriate when the dominant male is nearby, or when family members are not around for support. This also requires adaptability as the social environment is not static, but rather fluid and constantly changing.
Lamar is a male chimpanzee who was born on Sepember 27, 1988. He participates in daily computerized experiments on face recognition..
I have researched social cognition in nonhuman primates for over 12 years. These studies began by examining the mechanisms underlying face recognition in chimpanzees and rhesus monkeys and comparing this to human face processing.
To do these studies, subjects operate a computerized joystick task where images are presented in a match-to-sample format. First, we presented subjects with a high quality digitized photograph of an unfamiliar conspecific’s face on a computer. This is the sample image, the one that they have to match. They orient to this by contacting it with the joystick-controlled cursor, after which they are presented with two comparison images. Of these two comparisons, one matches the sample and the correct response is to contact this image with the cursor.
The match-to-sample paradigm is extremely versatile in that the question always remains the same: match the sample, but there is a multitude of ways in which the matching pair can be similar. We call this basis of similarity the dimension of matching. We have, for example, examined individual recognition by presenting two different pictures of the same chimpanzee as the correct pair. This task requires subjects to detect similarities in facial features and their configurations. Thus, the dimension of matching is the identity of the individual presented. We have also presented two different individuals making the same facial expression as the correct pair. In this case, the dimension of matching is the expression being made, not the identity of the individual (See MTS for examples).
Links
Yerkes National Primate Reserach Center
International Journal of Primatology
