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Tufted capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) show understanding of human attentional states when requesting food held by a human

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Abstract

Researchers have investigated to what extent non-human primates understand others’ attentional states, as this ability is considered an important prerequisite for theory of mind. However, previous studies using food requesting tasks have failed to show that non-human primates attribute perception to others as a function of their attentional states. One possible reason is that food requesting tasks may require subjects not only to take into account an experimenter’s attentional state but also to direct it toward the food. The present study tested tufted capuchin monkeys’ (Cebus apella) understanding of others’ attentional states in a food requesting task. In the first situation, monkeys were required only to attract an experimenter’s attention. In the second situation, the monkeys were required to both attract the experimenter’s attention and direct it toward food on a table. The results revealed that capuchin monkeys showed evidence of understanding the experimenter’s attentional variations only in the former condition. This suggests that previous tasks, requiring referential gestures, lacking in most non-human primates, failed to reveal sensitivity to human attentional states because the subjects might not have understood the requesting situation. In conclusion, capuchin monkeys can understand variations in others’ attentional states, although this ability appears limited compared to what is seen in humans.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research No. 2053 to Yuko Hattori and 17300085 to Kazuo Fujita from Japan Society for the Promotion of Sciences and by the 21st Century COE Program, D-10, to Kyoto University, from Japan Ministry of Education, Culture, Sport, Science, and Technology. The subject monkeys were originally provided by the Cooperation Research Program from the Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University, with Tetsuro Matsuzawa as the counterpart. This study was approved by the Committee for the Animal Experiments, Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University, and also strictly adhered to the 2nd version of Guide for the care and use of laboratory primates of the Primate Research Institute (2002).

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  1. Yuko Hattori

    Present address: Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University, Kanrin 41-2, Inuyama, Aichi, 484-8506, Japan

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Tsukuba, Japan

    Yuko Hattori

  2. Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

    Hika Kuroshima & Kazuo Fujita

Authors
  1. Yuko Hattori
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  2. Hika Kuroshima
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  3. Kazuo Fujita
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Correspondence to Yuko Hattori.

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Hattori, Y., Kuroshima, H. & Fujita, K. Tufted capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) show understanding of human attentional states when requesting food held by a human. Anim Cogn 13, 87–92 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-009-0248-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-009-0248-6

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