Canteloup Charlotte, Piraux Emilie, Poulin Nicolas, Meunier Hélène
Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives et Adaptatives, UMR 7364, Strasbourg, France; Centre de Primatologie de l'Université de Strasbourg, Niederhausbergen, France; University of Strasbourg Institute for Advanced Study, Strasbourg, France.
Centre de Primatologie de l'Université de Strasbourg , Niederhausbergen , France.
PeerJ. 2016 Feb 22;4:e1693. doi: 10.7717/peerj.1693. eCollection 2016.
The understanding of the visual perception of others, also named visual perspective taking, is a component of Theory of Mind. Although strong evidence of visual perspective taking has been reported in great apes, the issue is more open to discussion in monkeys. We investigated whether Tonkean macaques (Macaca tonkeana) know what conspecifics do and do not see, using a food competition paradigm originally developed in great apes. We tested individuals in pairs, after establishing the dominance relationship within each pair. Twenty-one pairs were tested in four different conditions. In one condition, the subordinate had the choice between two pieces of food, one that was visible only to it and another that was also visible to the dominant. It was predicted that if the subordinate understands that the dominant cannot see both pieces of food because one is hidden from its view, the subordinate should preferentially go for the food visible only to itself. In the three other conditions, we varied the temporal and visual access to food for both individuals, to control for alternative explanations based on dominance. We recorded the first movement direction chosen by subjects, i.e. towards a) visible food b) hidden food or c) elsewhere; and the outcome of the test, i.e. the quantity of food obtained. Results showed that subordinates moved preferentially for the hidden food when released simultaneously with the dominant and also with a head start on the dominant. By contrast, dominants' choices of the two pieces of food were random. We also describe and discuss some of the strategies used by subordinates in these tests. According to the whole of our results, Tonkean macaques seem capable of visual perspective taking despite the fact that a low-level explanation as behavior reading has not been totally excluded.
对他人视觉感知的理解，也称为视觉观点采择，是心理理论的一个组成部分。尽管已有大量证据表明大猩猩具备视觉观点采择能力，但猴子在这一问题上仍存在更多可探讨之处。我们采用最初在大猩猩中开发的食物竞争范式，研究了汤基猕猴（Macaca tonkeana）是否知道同种个体能看到什么和看不到什么。在确定每对猕猴的支配关系后，我们对它们进行成对测试。21对猕猴在四种不同条件下接受了测试。在一种条件下，从属猕猴可以在两块食物之间进行选择，其中一块食物只有它能看到，另一块食物则主从猕猴都能看到。据预测，如果从属猕猴明白主从猕猴看不到两块食物，因为其中一块被遮挡住了，那么从属猕猴应该会优先选择只有它自己能看到的食物。在其他三种条件下，我们改变了两只猕猴获取食物的时间和视觉条件，以控制基于支配关系的其他解释。我们记录了受试猕猴选择的第一个移动方向，即朝向a）可见食物、b）隐藏食物还是c）其他地方；以及测试结果，即获得的食物量。结果表明，当与主试猕猴同时释放且比主试猕猴有先行优势时，从属猕猴会优先选择隐藏食物。相比之下，主试猕猴对两块食物的选择是随机的。我们还描述并讨论了从属猕猴在这些测试中使用的一些策略。根据我们的全部结果，尽管尚未完全排除行为解读这种低层次解释，但汤基猕猴似乎具备视觉观点采择能力。
