Bovet Dalila, Washburn David A
Language Research Center, Department of Psychology, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA.
J Comp Psychol. 2003 Dec;117(4):400-5. doi: 10.1037/0735-7036.117.4.400.
The authors trained 3 adult male rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) to categorize pairs of unknown conspecifics presented in a video according to the dominance status of the videotaped monkeys. The subjects were trained to choose the dominant monkey for a category of films (e.g., films showing 1 monkey chasing another); then, new films were presented involving different conspecifics, and the monkeys' first responses to this new category of behavior (e.g., monkeys fighting) were taken as evidence of transfer. Two subjects were able to generalize categorical judgments of dominance to new films involving new behaviors. These findings seem to indicate that monkeys can use abstract social concepts and are aware of the social relationships within their group.
作者训练了3只成年雄性恒河猴（猕猴），让它们根据视频中出现的未知同种动物的支配地位，对视频中呈现的同种动物对进行分类。研究对象被训练针对一类影片（例如，展示一只猴子追逐另一只猴子的影片）选择占主导地位的猴子；然后，播放涉及不同同种动物的新影片，猴子对这类新行为（例如，猴子打架）的首次反应被视为迁移的证据。两只猴子能够将支配地位的分类判断推广到涉及新行为的新影片中。这些发现似乎表明，猴子可以使用抽象的社会概念，并意识到它们群体中的社会关系。
