Untrained chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) fail to imitate novel actions.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Social learning research in apes has focused on social learning in the technical (problem solving) domain - an approach that confounds action and physical information. Successful subjects in such studies may have been able to perform target actions not as a result of imitation learning but because they had learnt some technical aspect, for example, copying the movements of an apparatus (i.e., different forms of emulation learning).

Methods

Here we present data on action copying by non-enculturated and untrained chimpanzees when physical information is removed from demonstrations. To date, only one such study (on gesture copying in a begging context) has been conducted--with negative results. Here we have improved this methodology and have also added non-begging te

SUBMITTER: Tennie C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3414512 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature