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Barrett, L., & Henzi, P. (2005). The social nature of primate cognition. Proc Biol Sci, 272(1575), 1865–1875.
Abstract: The hypothesis that the enlarged brain size of the primates was selected for by social, rather than purely ecological, factors has been strongly influential in studies of primate cognition and behaviour over the past two decades. However, the Machiavellian intelligence hypothesis, also known as the social brain hypothesis, tends to emphasize certain traits and behaviours, like exploitation and deception, at the expense of others, such as tolerance and behavioural coordination, and therefore presents only one view of how social life may shape cognition. This review outlines work from other relevant disciplines, including evolutionary economics, cognitive science and neurophysiology, to illustrate how these can be used to build a more general theoretical framework, incorporating notions of embodied and distributed cognition, in which to situate questions concerning the evolution of primate social cognition.
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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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Cheney, D. L., Seyfarth, R. M., & Silk, J. B. (1995). The responses of female baboons (Papio cynocephalus ursinus) to anomalous social interactions: evidence for causal reasoning? J Comp Psychol, 109(2), 134–141.
Abstract: Baboons' (Papio cynocephalus ursinus) understanding of cause-effect relations in the context of social interactions was examined through use of a playback experiment. Under natural conditions, dominant female baboons often grunt to more subordinate mothers when interacting with their infants. Mothers occasionally respond to these grunts by uttering submissive fear barks. Subjects were played causally inconsistent call sequences in which a lower ranking female apparently grunted to a higher ranking female, and the higher ranking female apparently responded with fear barks. As a control, subjects heard a sequence made causally consistent by the inclusion of grunts from a 3rd female that was dominant to both of the others. Subjects responded significantly more strongly to the causally inconsistent sequences, suggesting that they recognized the factors that cause 1 individual to give submissive vocalizations to another.
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Cheney, D. L., & Seyfarth, R. M. (1990). The representation of social relations by monkeys. Cognition, 37(1-2), 167–196.
Abstract: Monkeys recognize the social relations that exist among others in their group. They know who associates with whom, for example, and other animals' relative dominance ranks. In addition, monkeys appear to compare types of social relations and make same/different judgments about them. In captivity, longtailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis) trained to recognize the relation between one adult female and her offspring can identify the same relation among other mother-offspring pairs, and distinguish this relation from bonds between individuals who are related in a different way. In the wild, if a vervet monkey (Cercopithecus aethiops) has seen a fight between a member of its own family and a member of Family X, this increases the likelihood that it will act aggressively toward another member of Family X. Vervets act as if they recognize some similarity between their own close associates and the close associates of others. To make such comparisons the monkeys must have some way of representing the properties of social relationships. We discuss the adaptive value of such representations, the information they contain, their structure, and their limitations.
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Weaver, A., & de Waal, F. B. M. (2003). The mother-offspring relationship as a template in social development: reconciliation in captive brown capuchins (Cebus apella). J Comp Psychol, 117(1), 101–110.
Abstract: Mother-offspring (MO) relationship quality was investigated to determine its influence on the development of reconciliation--affiliation between opponents shortly after a fight--because it influenceswhat distressed youngsters learn about calming down. Data were longitudinal and cross-sectional observational samples of 38 MO pairs of monkeys across 24 months. An MO relationship quality index (RQI) classified each pair as secure or insecure. Reconciliation emerged in infancy.Secure youngsters had an appeasing conciliatory style, and insecure youngsters had an agitated conciliatory style. Conclusions are that reconciliation develops from the attachment behavior system and MO RQI is related to the particular conciliatory style youngsters develop by affecting how aroused they are by conflict and the subsequent socializing they seek to calm down.
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Brilot, B. O., & Johnstone, R. A. (2003). The limits to cost-free signalling of need between relatives. Proc Biol Sci, 270(1519), 1055–1060.
Abstract: Theoretical models have demonstrated the possibility of stable cost-free signalling of need between relatives. The stability of these cost-free equilibria depends on the indirect fitness cost of cheating and deceiving a donor into giving away resources. We show that this stability is highly sensitive to the distribution of need among signallers and receivers. In particular, cost-free signalling is likely to prove stable only if there is very large variation in need (such that the least-needy individuals stand to gain much less than the most-needy individuals from additional resources). We discuss whether these conditions are likely to be found in altricial avian breeding systems--the most intensively studied instance of signalling of need between relatives. We suggest that cost-free signalling is more likely to prove stable and will provide parents with more information during the earlier phases of chick growth, when parents can more easily meet the demands of a brood (and chicks are more likely to reach satiation). Later, informative yet cost-free signalling is unlikely to persist.
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Emery, N. J. (2000). The eyes have it: the neuroethology, function and evolution of social gaze. Neurosci Biobehav Rev, 24(6), 581–604.
Abstract: Gaze is an important component of social interaction. The function, evolution and neurobiology of gaze processing are therefore of interest to a number of researchers. This review discusses the evolutionary role of social gaze in vertebrates (focusing on primates), and a hypothesis that this role has changed substantially for primates compared to other animals. This change may have been driven by morphological changes to the face and eyes of primates, limitations in the facial anatomy of other vertebrates, changes in the ecology of the environment in which primates live, and a necessity to communicate information about the environment, emotional and mental states. The eyes represent different levels of signal value depending on the status, disposition and emotional state of the sender and receiver of such signals. There are regions in the monkey and human brain which contain neurons that respond selectively to faces, bodies and eye gaze. The ability to follow another individual's gaze direction is affected in individuals with autism and other psychopathological disorders, and after particular localized brain lesions. The hypothesis that gaze following is “hard-wired” in the brain, and may be localized within a circuit linking the superior temporal sulcus, amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex is discussed.
Keywords: Animals; *Eye; Fixation, Ocular; Humans; *Social Behavior
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Hare, B., Brown, M., Williamson, C., & Tomasello, M. (2002). The domestication of social cognition in dogs. Science, 298(5598), 1634–1636.
Abstract: Dogs are more skillful than great apes at a number of tasks in which they must read human communicative signals indicating the location of hidden food. In this study, we found that wolves who were raised by humans do not show these same skills, whereas domestic dog puppies only a few weeks old, even those that have had little human contact, do show these skills. These findings suggest that during the process of domestication, dogs have been selected for a set of social-cognitive abilities that enable them to communicate with humans in unique ways.
Keywords: Animals; *Animals, Domestic; *Behavior, Animal; *Cognition; *Cues; *Dogs; Food; Humans; Memory; Pan troglodytes; *Social Behavior; Species Specificity; Vision; Wolves
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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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Fox, N. A. (2004). Temperament and early experience form social behavior. Ann N Y Acad Sci, 1038, 171–178.
Abstract: Individual differences in the way persons respond to stimulation can have important consequences for their ability to learn and their choice of vocation. Temperament is the study of such individual differences, being thought of as the behavioral style of an individual. Common to all approaches in the study of temperament are the notions that it can be identified in infancy, is fairly stable across development, and influences adult personality. We have identified a specific temperament type in infancy that involves heightened distress to novel and unfamiliar stimuli. Infants who exhibit this temperament are likely, as they get older, to display behavioral inhibition-wariness and heightened vigilance of the unfamiliar-particularly in social situations. Our work has also described the underlying biology of this temperament and has linked it to neural systems supporting fear responses in animals. Children displaying behavioral inhibition are at-risk for behavioral problems related to anxiety and social withdrawal.
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