Matsuzawa Tetsuro
Section of Language and Intelligence, Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University, Japan.
Anim Cogn. 2003 Dec;6(4):199-211. doi: 10.1007/s10071-003-0199-2. Epub 2003 Oct 18.
This paper aims to review a long-term research project exploring the chimpanzee mind within historical and ecological contexts. The Ai project began in 1978 and was directly inspired by preceding ape-language studies conducted in Western countries. However, in contrast with the latter, it has focused on the perceptual and cognitive capabilities of chimpanzees rather than communicative skills between humans and chimpanzees. In the original setting, a single chimpanzee faced a computer-controlled apparatus and performed various kinds of matching-to-sample discrimination tasks. Questions regarding the chimpanzee mind can be traced back to Wolfgang Koehler's work in the early part of the 20th century. Yet, Japan has its unique natural and cultural background: it is home to an indigenous primate species, the Japanese snow monkey. This fact has contributed to the emergence of two previous projects in the wild led by the late Kinji Imanishi and his students. First, the Koshima monkey project began in 1948 and became famous for its discovery of the cultural propagation of sweet-potato washing behavior. Second, pioneering work in Africa, starting in 1958, aimed to study great apes in their natural habitat. Thanks to the influence of these intellectual ancestors, the present author also undertook the field study of chimpanzees in the wild, focusing on tool manufacture and use. This work has demonstrated the importance of social and ecological perspectives even for the study of the mind. Combining experimental approaches with a field setting, the Ai project continues to explore cognition and behavior in chimpanzees, while its focus has shifted from the study of a single subject toward that of the community as a whole.
本文旨在回顾一项长期研究项目，该项目在历史和生态背景下探索黑猩猩的思维。爱项目始于1978年，直接受到西方国家此前进行的猿类语言研究的启发。然而，与后者不同的是，它专注于黑猩猩的感知和认知能力，而非人类与黑猩猩之间的交流技能。在最初的设置中，一只黑猩猩面对一台计算机控制的设备，并执行各种匹配样本的辨别任务。关于黑猩猩思维的问题可以追溯到20世纪初沃尔夫冈·科勒的研究。然而，日本有其独特的自然和文化背景：它是本土灵长类物种日本猕猴的家园。这一事实促成了之前由已故的今西锦司及其学生领导的两个野外项目的出现。首先，幸岛猕猴项目始于1948年，并因其发现红薯清洗行为的文化传播而闻名。其次，始于1958年的在非洲的开创性工作旨在研究自然栖息地中的大猩猩。由于这些学术先驱的影响，本文作者也对野生黑猩猩进行了实地研究，重点是工具制造和使用。这项工作证明了社会和生态视角对于思维研究的重要性。将实验方法与实地环境相结合，爱项目继续探索黑猩猩的认知和行为，同时其重点已从对单个个体的研究转向对整个群体的研究。
