Children see, children do, but monkeys know better

I usually like to blog about recent articles, and I try to limit myself to papers published in the last 2-3 years. I’m going to make an exception this time and write about a publication from way back (2005). By scientific standards, 5 years ago is literally ancient (kind of like computer standards), but bear with me, this is going to be worth it (unlike a 5-year old computer).

Researchers from the UK were interested in finding out more about learning patterns, and about how our learning patterns differ from one of our close cousins, the chimpanzee. To test this, they subjected human children 2-4 years old and chimpanzees 2-6 years old to a simple task: retrieving a treat from a box.

In the first set of experiments, the researchers gave the chimps an opaque black box, and showed them how to open it to retrieve a treat inside. This wasn’t a simple pull-the-top-off kind of box, though. The box seemingly could only be opened following a series of specific steps: pulling a bolt, putting a stick in a hole, opening a door, etc. Chimps are quick-learners, though, and by imitating the researcher, they were soon able to retrieve the treat, no problem.

How well did the human children to at the same task? Quite well. They too were able to learn how to retrieve the treat from the black box by copying all the steps the researcher showed them. It would have been slightly worrying otherwise. I mean, we’ve taken over the world, right? Surely we can teach our young how to open a silly box, right?

The second set of experiments was almost exactly the same as the first one, except this time the box was made out of clear plastic instead of being opaque. The researchers went through the same process of teaching the chimps how to open the box. But there’s a catch: with a transparent box, it became very obvious that most of the steps supposedly needed to open the box were irrelevant. All you had to do was open the door. Chimpanzees, our closest living relative, are quite smart, and dropped all the unnecessary steps. They didn’t bother with the bolt and the stick and all those irrelevant actions: they went straight for the door and grabbed the treat.

When it was time for the children to be tested on the clear box, they too got shown how to open it by the researchers, including all the unnecessary steps. And when it was their turn to do it, they obviously…

Started pulling the bolt, putting the stick in the hole, etc.

Wait, what?

Did I get that wrong? I must have messed up the subjects… Wait… Nope. Those monkeys just fed us a piece of humble pie.

The researchers suggest that in the case of this study, the difference between how the chimps and how the children perform the task may have to do with a different focus of attention. Children pay more attention to the process of opening the box and the actions of the researcher, while chimps have their eyes on the prize, and focus more on the goal rather than the process. The researchers conclude by saying that imitation may be a human strategy that is often employed at the expense of efficiency.

The interesting thing about this article is that some news reports and descriptions of this experiment in magazines ended with a conclusion that more or less stipulated that our children imitated even the irrelevant steps of the task because that was the smarter thing to do, twisting the story around to make it sound like humans were superior to the chimpanzees in some way. Start your debate engines, but my opinion is that we should stop considering ourselves so superior. The results of this study are pretty straightforward. Do we really have to come up with a twisted interpretation of the results to make us sound like the winners? I would love it if we could just look at this experiment and say, hey, what do you know, we can learn something from the chimps.

Eyes on the prize, people. Eyes on the prize.

This monkey is laughing at you.

Reference: Causal knowledge and imitation/emulation switching in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and children (Homo sapiens). (2005) Horner V., Whiten A. Anim Cogn 8(3):164-81.

Dating advice courtesy of your friendly neighborhood monkey

Dating advice websites abound with many different kinds of advice: good advice (don’t pick your nose), strange advice (date according to your blood type), not so good advice (Leos dating Leos need to hire domestic helpers). One suggestion that seems to pop up quite frequently is to mimic the body language of your date. He picks up his drink for a sip, you pick up yours. He strokes his hair, you stroke yours. He picks his nose, you pick your nose. You get the idea. As it turns out, in a social interaction context, we humans tend to unintentionally imitate what others are doing. Think of this as a team-building exercise: it’s a behavior that helps establish rapport, empathy and other fuzzy feelings toward each other.

A recent publication in the journal Science shows that behavior matching leading to increased rapport is not exclusive to humans, and it can also occur between different species.

The study looks at capuchin monkeys, a very social primate species. During the experiments, the monkey is given a ball to play with. On either side of the monkey’s cage stands an experimenter. One experimenter is mimicking what the monkey is doing with the ball (poking it, pounding it against the wall, trying to eat it… Mmmmm…), while the other experimenter is also playing with the ball, but not mimicking the monkey. The researchers show that not only do the monkeys look at the imitators more, they also spend more time hanging out close to the imitators and prefer to interact with the imitators in a food exchange game. The authors also did an important series of control experiments to show that these effects were not due to the monkeys perceiving more attention from the imitators.

So why are we subconsciously hard-wired to constantly be playing Simon Says? It is thought that the positive feelings resulting from behavior matching played an important role in human evolution by leading to higher levels of tolerance and by preventing aggressive behavior (to put it simply, by preventing us from beating each other up). The same principle probably applies to primates, and the empathic connection that results from imitation may explain the altruistic tendencies observed in the behavior of capuchin monkeys.

Next time you catch yourself winking back at someone who winked at you, or laughing at a joke you didn’t get because everyone else is laughing, keep in mind it’s for the greater good. After all, even monkeys know that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Scientific Chick readers applying their new found knowledge
(Image from Loldogs)

Reference: Capuchin monkeys display affiliation toward humans who imitate them. (2009) Paukner, A., Suomi, S.J., Visalberghi, E., Ferrari, P.F. Science 325:880-882.