Abstract
We investigated the behavioural and cognitive development of a captive male infant chimpanzee, Ayumu, raised by his mother, Ai. Here we report Ayumu's achievements up to the age of 2 years and 3 months, in the context of complex computer-controlled tasks. From soon after birth, Ayumu had been present during an experiment performed by his mother. The task consisted of two phases, a matching-to-sample task in which she received token rewards, and the insertion of these tokens into a vending machine to obtain food rewards. Ayumu himself received no reward or encouragement from humans for any of the actions he exhibited during the experiment. At the age of 9 months and 3 weeks, Ayumu performed his first matching-to-sample trial. At around 1 year and 3 months, he began to perform them consistently. Also during this period, he frequently stole food rewards from his mother. At 2 years and 3 months, Ayumu succeeded for the first time in inserting a token into the vending machine. Once he had succeeded in using a token, he performed both phases of the task in sequence 20 times consecutively. The infant's behaviour was not shaped by food rewards but by a strong motivation to copy his mother's behaviour. Our observations of Ayumu thus mirror the learning processes shown by wild chimpanzees.
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Acknowledgements
This study was conducted at the Primate Research Institute of Kyoto University and was supported financially by the MEXT of Japan (Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research nos. 12002009 and 10CE2005, and the 21st Century COE program A2 to Kyoto University). We would like to express our thanks to all members of the Section of Language and Intelligence at the Primate Research Institute of Kyoto University for their assistance during this study. Sumiharu Nagumo was especially helpful in developing the token system. Special thanks are due to Dora Biro and Vanessa Hayes for their suggestions and critical comments on early versions of this manuscript.
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Sousa, C., Okamoto, S. & Matsuzawa, T. Behavioural development in a matching-to-sample task and token use by an infant chimpanzee reared by his mother. Anim Cogn 6, 259–267 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-003-0186-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-003-0186-7