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" A Comparison of Sequential Learning Errors Made by Apes and Monkeys Reveals Individual but not Species Differences in Learning "
Egelkamp, Crystal L; Jacobson, Sarah L; Cronin, Katherine A; Wagner, Katherine E; Ross, Stephen R; Hopper, Lydia M
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AL
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| Record Number
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908461
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LA024578f5
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| Title & Author
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A Comparison of Sequential Learning Errors Made by Apes and Monkeys Reveals Individual but not Species Differences in Learning [Article]\ Egelkamp, Crystal L; Jacobson, Sarah L; Cronin, Katherine A; Wagner, Katherine E; Ross, Stephen R; Hopper, Lydia M
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2019
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UCLA
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| Abstract
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Using methods comparable to those used previously to test closely-related taxa (<em>Pan troglodytes </em>and <em>Macaca mulatta</em>), our aim was to better understand how gorillas (<em>Gorilla gorilla gorilla</em>) and Japanese macaques (<em>M. fuscata</em>) learn sequences. Using a disappearing-type simultaneous chain, we trained five gorillas and eight macaques on a two-item list of colored stimuli presented via touchscreens. There was no difference across species in the number of trials required to learn the two-item list. We added a third item to the list as each subject reached criterion. We then analyzed the subjects’ first 30 trials with the three-item list and found that the rate of successfully sequencing the list varied by subject but not by species. In their first 30 trials of the three-item list, subjects selected the second item correctly only at chance, suggesting they had only encoded the first symbol when learning the two-item list. One gorilla, tested on longer sequences, showed similar responses: when first presented with a newly-lengthened list, he only selected the penultimate item at chance levels. Thus, the primates’ errors with newly-lengthened lists is suggestive of the chaining theory of learning. These results highlight similarities in list learning of these two distantly-related primate species as well as the clear intra-species variation in learning.
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