Primatology - cognition + intelligence

Process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience and the senses

Ability to easily understand and to deal with new and difficult situations
Involves adaptability and flexibility

How info about physical world is acquired, processed and used
Spatial cognition
Timing cognition
Numerical cognition

How info in and from social contexts is acquired, processed and used
Social learning
ToM
Social emotion

Comparative study of mechanisms and origin of cognition between various species

Lab experiments
Field studies

+ Controlled conditions
+ Can narrow down to specific tasks
+ Uses replicable paradigms
- Lack of ecological relevance
- Captive populations

+ Ecologically relevant
- Difficult to replicate
- Observations often subjective
- Hard to control all paradigms
- Ethical issues

Primates have larger brain than expected in proportion to their body size
Primate brain size positively correlated with cognitive abilities

Ecological-intelligence
Social-intelligence
Extractive foraging
Social brain
Expensive brain
Machiavellian intelligence
Cultural intelligence

Ecological selection pressure = resources
Challenges: finding, extracting, obtaining resources

Life in the group
Organisms belonging to the same species

Social selection pressure = conspecifics
Challenges: understanding and remembering social relationships and characteristics of social networks

Spatial memory (memorising food locations)
Associative learning - folivores having smaller brains than frugivores, also tool use is another example
Explorativeness (searching for food)

Chimps locate food from multiple directions (suggests mental map)
Lemurs travel from food patch to neighbouring food patch, straight lines, backtrack, use landmarks

Frugivore - fruit dispersed and is seasonal (harder to locate)
Folivore - leaves evenly distributed and not seasonal

Milton 1981 - frugivore > folivore brain size

Technological specialisations in foraging
Great apes have evolved adaptations for exploiting variety of high-energy embedded foods through intelligent tool use and its social transmission

Great apes: embedded food is seasonal, tools only needed during certain seasons
Humans: tool dependence all year-round

Dipping
Fishing
Excavating
Opening
Removing

Strong relationship between precision grip, fine motor control and foraging capacity
Technological prowess and dexterity require advanced cogntion

Complex cognition and enlarged "executive brains" evolved in response to challenges that are associated with social complexity

Dominance relationships - relative rank
Triadic interactions - coalitions, redirected aggression, 3rd party affiliation, 3rd party relationships
Fission-fusion

Understanding of identity, kinship, relative rank

Bergman et al 2003
Baboons recognise that dominance hierarchy can be sub-divided into family groups
When roles are reveresed baboons show surprise
Suggests they understand their own rank, rank of others and how they relate

Redirected aggression towards low-ranking kind of opponenet
Reconciliation on behalf of kin (3rd part affiliation)
Recruitment of coalition partners (3rd party relationships)

Amici et al 2013
Fission-fusion species show high inhibitory control than non fission-fusion species
Inhbitory control considered complex cognitive skill

Primates evolved large brains to manage their unusually complex social systems
Used to explain why primates have unusually large brains for body size compared to all other vertebrates

Dunbar 1998
Neocortex resposnible for cognitive processes such as reasoning and consciousness
Neocortex positively correlated with group size
Kudo and Dunbar 2001
Neocortex larger in species with larger grooming cliques
Larger grooming cliques found in larger groups

Deaner et al 2007
Cognitive abilities better predicted by overall brain size than by neocortex size

Deaner et al 2003
Explains why only some species have a large brain:
- Large brains associated with slow life history
- Life history constrains: slow development and low mortality
- Brain: expensive to develop and maintain
- Brain size and life span correlated

Suggests social intelligence hypothesis insufficient in explaining higher cognitive abilities
This model also considers computational thought and intention reading:
- Manipulation
- Deception
Requires mental representations

Apes = yes
Monkeys = no

Goosens et al 2008
Macaques follow gaze of others
Allows them to understand what others can see

Suggests only humans’ social, but not their physical, cognition differs from great apes
Social learning more efficient than individual exploration
Species with frequent opportunities for social learning can afford to increase cognitive power

2016
Tested zoo populations of 2 species of orang-utans
Sociality in the wild: Sumatran > Bornean
Captivity innate problem solving: Sumatran > Bornean
Captivity inhibition: Sumatran > Bornean
Captivity exploration style: Sumatran more cautious

Stronger selection of cognitive mechanisms underlying learning in the more social species (Sumatran)

- Correlation does not always mean causation (could be due to pathways and neural connections, not just brain size)

Roberts et al 2014
Language-trained chimps
Phase 1: experimenter shows where food is hidden
Phase 2: Naïve human experimenter uses gestures of chimp to try and find hidden food
Show increased rate of non-indicative gestures (eg. excitement)
Gesture elaboration (pointing)
Suggests communicative flexibility

Established beyond reasonable doubt that most basic cognitive skills found in humans are already found in our living primate relatives

3 times larger

Human cognitive abilities allow for culture to develop
Certain pressures favoured a unique set of cognitive skills leading to a species-specific cultural intelligence

Human cultural groups far more cooperative
Human cultural traditions passed on through unique levels of imitative learning and teaching

Evidence for future planning:
Orangutans and bonobos quickley learned to keep a tool (up to 14h) in anticipation for future use

Evidence for intention reading/ToM:
Chimps and other apes can discern that another's goal is to reach an out-of-reach object and then help them reach it or grab it first if it's food
Chimps will imitate what a researcher is trying to do, rather than what they actually do (imitate purposeful > accidental actions)