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Byrne, R. W., Whiten, A., & Henzi, S. P. (1990). Social relationships of mountain baboons: Leadership and affiliation in a non-female-bonded monkey. Am. J. Primatol., 20(4), 313–329.
Abstract: Abstract 10.1002/ajp.1350200409.abs Instead of close and differentiated relationships among adult females, the accepted norm for savanna baboons, groups of Drakensberg mountain baboons (Papio ursinus) showed strong affiliation of females towards a single male. The same male was usually the decision-making animal in controlling group movements. Lactating or pregnant females focused their grooming on this “leader” male, producing a radially patterned sociogram, as in the desert baboon (P. hamadryas); the leader male supported young animals in the group against aggression and protected them against external threats. Unlike typical savanna baboons, these mountain baboons rarely displayed approach-retreat or triadic interactions, and entirely lacked coalitions among adult females. Both groups studied were reproductively one-male; male-female relationships in one were like those in a unit of a hamadryas male at his peak, while the other group resembled the unit of an old hamadryas male, who still leads the group, with a male follower starting to build up a new unit and already monopolizing mating. In their mountain environment, where the low population density suggests conditions as harsh for baboons as in deserts, adults in these groups kept unusually large distances apart during ranging; kin tended to range apart, and spacing of adults was greatest at the end of the dry, winter season. These facts support the hypothesis that sparse food is responsible for convergence with hamadryas social organization. It is suggested that all baboons, though matrilocal, are better categorized as “cross-sex-bonded” than “female bonded”.
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Horner, V., & Whiten, A. (2005). Causal knowledge and imitation/emulation switching in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and children (Homo sapiens). Anim. Cogn., 8(3), 164–181.
Abstract: This study explored whether the tendency of chimpanzees and children to use emulation or imitation to solve a tool-using task was a response to the availability of causal information. Young wild-born chimpanzees from an African sanctuary and 3- to 4-year-old children observed a human demonstrator use a tool to retrieve a reward from a puzzle-box. The demonstration involved both causally relevant and irrelevant actions, and the box was presented in each of two conditions: opaque and clear. In the opaque condition, causal information about the effect of the tool inside the box was not available, and hence it was impossible to differentiate between the relevant and irrelevant parts of the demonstration. However, in the clear condition causal information was available, and subjects could potentially determine which actions were necessary. When chimpanzees were presented with the opaque box, they reproduced both the relevant and irrelevant actions, thus imitating the overall structure of the task. When the box was presented in the clear condition they instead ignored the irrelevant actions in favour of a more efficient, emulative technique. These results suggest that emulation is the favoured strategy of chimpanzees when sufficient causal information is available. However, if such information is not available, chimpanzees are prone to employ a more comprehensive copy of an observed action. In contrast to the chimpanzees, children employed imitation to solve the task in both conditions, at the expense of efficiency. We suggest that the difference in performance of chimpanzees and children may be due to a greater susceptibility of children to cultural conventions, perhaps combined with a differential focus on the results, actions and goals of the demonstrator.
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Caldwell, C. A., & Whiten, A. (2004). Testing for social learning and imitation in common marmosets, Callithrix jacchus, using an artificial fruit. Anim. Cogn., 7(2), 77–85.
Abstract: We tested for social learning and imitation in common marmosets using an artificial foraging task and trained conspecific demonstrators. We trained a demonstrator marmoset to open an artificial fruit, providing a full demonstration of the task to be learned. Another marmoset provided a partial demonstration, controlling for stimulus enhancement effects, by eating food from the outside of the apparatus. We thus compared three observer groups, each consisting of four animals: those that received the full demonstration, those that received the partial demonstration, and a control group that saw no demonstration prior to testing. Although none of the observer marmosets succeeded in opening the artificial fruit during the test periods, there were clear effects of demonstration type. Those that saw the full demonstration manipulated the apparatus more overall, whereas those from the control group manipulated it the least of the three groups. Those from the full-demonstration group also contacted the particular parts of the artificial fruit that they had seen touched (localised stimulus enhancement) to a greater extent than the other two groups. There was also an interaction between the number of hand and mouth touches made to the artificial fruit for the full- and partial-demonstration groups. Whether or not these data represent evidence for imitation is discussed. We also propose that the clear differences between the groups suggest that social learning mechanisms provide real benefits to these animals in terms of developing novel food-processing skills analogous to the one presented here.
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Caldwell, C. A., & Whiten, A. (2002). Evolutionary perspectives on imitation: is a comparative psychology of social learning possible? Anim. Cogn., 5(4), 193–208.
Abstract: Studies of imitation in animals have become numerous in recent times, but do they contribute to a comparative psychology of social learning? We review this burgeoning field to identify the problems and prospects for such a goal. Difficulties of two main kinds are identified. First, researchers have tackled questions about social learning from at least three very different theoretical perspectives, the “phylogenetic”, “animal model”, and “adaptational”. We examine the conflicts between them and consider the scope for integration. A second difficulty arises in the methodological approaches used in the discipline. In relation to one of these – survey reviews of published studies – we tabulate and compare the contrasting conclusions of nine articles that together review 36 studies. The basis for authors' disagreements, including the matters of perceptual opacity, novelty, sequential structure, and goal representation, are examined. In relation to the other key method, comparative experimentation, we identify 12 studies that have explicitly compared species' imitative ability on similar tasks. We examine the principal problems of comparing like with like in these studies and consider solutions, the most powerful of which we propose to be the use of a systematic range of task designs, rather than any single “gold standard” task.
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Whiten, A., & Byrne, R. W. (1988). Tactical deception in primates. Behav. Brain Sci., 11(02), 233–244.
Abstract: ABSTRACT Tactical deception occurs when an individual is able to use an “honest” act from his normal repertoire in a different context to mislead familiar individuals. Although primates have a reputation for social skill, most primate groups are so intimate that any deception is likely to be subtle and infrequent. Published records are sparse and often anecdotal. We have solicited new records from many primatologists and searched for repeating patterns. This has revealed several different forms of deceptive tactic, which we classify in terms of the function they perform. For each class, we sketch the features of another individual's state of mind that an individual acting with deceptive intent must be able to represent, thus acting as a “natural psychologist.” Our analysis will sharpen attention to apparent taxonomic differences. Before these findings can be generalized, however, behavioral scientists must agree on some fundamental methodological and theoretical questions in the study of the evolution of social cognition.
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Whiten, A., Horner, V., & de Waal, F. B. M. (2005). Conformity to cultural norms of tool use in chimpanzees. Nature, 437(7059), 737–740.
Abstract: Rich circumstantial evidence suggests that the extensive behavioural diversity recorded in wild great apes reflects a complexity of cultural variation unmatched by species other than our own. However, the capacity for cultural transmission assumed by this interpretation has remained difficult to test rigorously in the field, where the scope for controlled experimentation is limited. Here we show that experimentally introduced technologies will spread within different ape communities. Unobserved by group mates, we first trained a high-ranking female from each of two groups of captive chimpanzees to adopt one of two different tool-use techniques for obtaining food from the same 'Pan-pipe' apparatus, then re-introduced each female to her respective group. All but two of 32 chimpanzees mastered the new technique under the influence of their local expert, whereas none did so in a third population lacking an expert. Most chimpanzees adopted the method seeded in their group, and these traditions continued to diverge over time. A subset of chimpanzees that discovered the alternative method nevertheless went on to match the predominant approach of their companions, showing a conformity bias that is regarded as a hallmark of human culture.
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Whiten, A. (2005). The second inheritance system of chimpanzees and humans. Nature, 437(7055), 52–55.
Abstract: Half a century of dedicated field research has brought us from ignorance of our closest relatives to the discovery that chimpanzee communities resemble human cultures in possessing suites of local traditions that uniquely identify them. The collaborative effort required to establish this picture parallels the one set up to sequence the chimpanzee genome, and has revealed a complex social inheritance system that complements the genetic picture we are now developing.
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Whiten, A. (2000). Social complexity and social intelligence. In Novartis Foundation Symposium (Vol. 233, pp. 185–96; discussion pp. 196–201).
Abstract: When we talk of the 'nature of intelligence', or any other attribute, we may be referring to its essential structure, or to its place in nature, particularly the function it has evolved to serve. Here I examine both, from the perspective of the evolution of intelligence in primates. Over the last 20 years, the Social (or 'Machiavellian') Intelligence Hypothesis has gained empirical support. Its core claim is that the intelligence of primates is primarily an adaptation to the special complexities of primate social life. In addition to this hypothesis about the function of intellect, a secondary claim is that the very structure of intelligence has been moulded to be 'social' in character, an idea that presents a challenge to orthodox views of intelligence as a general-purpose capacity. I shall outline the principal components of social intelligence and the environment of social complexity it engages with. This raises the question of whether domain specificity is an appropriate characterization of social intelligence and its subcomponents, like theory of mind. As a counter-argument to such specificity I consider the hypothesis that great apes exhibit a cluster of advanced cognitive abilities that rest on a shared capacity for second-order mental representation.
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Whiten, A., Horner, V., Litchfield, C. A., & Marshall-Pescini, S. (2004). How do apes ape? Learn. Behav., 32(1), 36–52.
Abstract: In the wake of telling critiques of the foundations on which earlier conclusions were based, the last 15 years have witnessed a renaissance in the study of social learning in apes. As a result, we are able to review 31 experimental studies from this period in which social learning in chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans has been investigated. The principal question framed at the beginning of this era, Do apes ape? has been answered in the affirmative, at least in certain conditions. The more interesting question now is, thus, How do apes ape? Answering this question has engendered richer taxonomies of the range of social-learning processes at work and new methodologies to uncover them. Together, these studies suggest that apes ape by employing a portfolio of alternative social-learning processes in flexibly adaptive ways, in conjunction with nonsocial learning. We conclude by sketching the kind of decision tree that appears to underlie the deployment of these alternatives.
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