Familiar face + novel face = familiar face? Representational bias in the perception of morphed faces in chimpanzees.

ABSTRACT: Highly social animals possess a well-developed ability to distinguish the faces of familiar from novel conspecifics to induce distinct behaviors for maintaining society. However, the behaviors of animals when they encounter ambiguous faces of familiar yet novel conspecifics, e.g., strangers with faces resembling known individuals, have not been well characterised. Using a morphing technique and preferential-looking paradigm, we address this question via the chimpanzee's facial-recognition abilities. We presented eight subjects with three types of stimuli: (1) familiar faces, (2) novel faces and (3) intermediate morphed faces that were 50% familiar and 50% novel faces of conspecifics. We found that chimpanzees spent more time looking at novel faces and scanned novel faces more extensively t

SUBMITTER: Matsuda YT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4991860 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature