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Testing for social learning and imitation in common marmosets, Callithrix jacchus, using an artificial fruit

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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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Notes

  1. Demonstrator and observer were kept separated in this manner despite our previous results (Caldwell and Whiten 2003), which indicated that social learning effects might be enhanced by close social interaction. It was considered that, in terms of investigating the effects of two different demonstrations, it was crucial that the potentially different individual learning experiences between the two demonstration groups did not produce a confound.

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Acknowledgements

C.C. was supported by a University of St Andrews doctoral scholarship. We are grateful for the kind cooperation of Keith Morris and the rest of the staff of the Medical Research Council Human Reproductive Sciences Unit. Many thanks also to Dave Perrett and Christine Nicol for their helpful advice on an earlier version of this manuscript. We greatly appreciate the helpful comments of anonymous referees, and in particular we thank Louis Lefebvre for drawing our attention to relevant literature. The experiment described was carried out in compliance with current UK law.

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Correspondence to Christine A. Caldwell.

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Caldwell, C.A., Whiten, A. Testing for social learning and imitation in common marmosets, Callithrix jacchus, using an artificial fruit. Anim Cogn 7, 77–85 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-003-0192-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-003-0192-9

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