Linked Life Data

15668762

Source:http://linkedlifedata.com/resource/pubmed/id/15668762

Statements in which the resource exists as a subject.
PredicateObject
rdf:type
lifeskim:mentions
pubmed:issue
4
pubmed:dateCreated
2005-10-17
pubmed:abstractText
Most studies of animal tool use require subjects to use one object to gain access to a food reward. In many real world situations, however, animals perform more than one action in sequence to achieve their goals. Of theoretical interest is whether animals have the cognitive capacity to recognize the relationship between consecutive action sequences in which there may be one overall goal and several subgoals. Here we ask if cotton-top tamarins, a species that in captivity uses tools to solve means-end problems, can go one step further and use a sequence of tools (means) to obtain food (end). We first trained subjects to use a pulling tool to obtain a food reward. After this initial training, subjects were presented with problems in which one tool had to be used in combination with a second in order to obtain food. Subjects showed great difficulty when two tools were required to obtain the food reward. Although subjects attended to the connection between the tool and food reward, they ignored the physical connection between the two tools. After training on a two-tool problem, we presented subjects with a series of transfer tests to explore if they would generalize to new types of connections between the tools. Subjects readily transferred to new connections. Our results therefore provide the first evidence to date that tamarins can learn to solve problems involving two tools, but that they do so only with sufficient training.
pubmed:grant
pubmed:language
eng
pubmed:journal
pubmed:citationSubset
IM
pubmed:status
MEDLINE
pubmed:month
Oct
pubmed:issn
1435-9448
pubmed:author
pubmed:issnType
Print
pubmed:volume
8
pubmed:owner
NLM
pubmed:authorsComplete
Y
pubmed:pagination
236-46
pubmed:dateRevised
2007-11-14
pubmed:meshHeading
pubmed:year
2005
pubmed:articleTitle
Means-means-end tool choice in cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus): finding the limits on primates' knowledge of tools.
pubmed:affiliation
Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA. laurie.santos@yale.edu
pubmed:publicationType
Journal Article, Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S., Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't, Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural