The ecological rationality of delay tolerance: Insights from capuchin monkeys
The ecological rationality of delay tolerance: Insights from capuchin monkeys
复制标题
DOI：
10.1016/j.cognition.2010.10.021
复制
发表时间：
2011-04-01
期刊：
影响因子：
3.4
通讯作者：
Focaroli, Valentina
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Addessi, Elsa;Paglieri, Fabio;Focaroli, Valentina
人类和非人类动物都经常面临不同时间可用选项之间的决策，延迟满足的能力通常被认为是人类区别于其他动物的特征之一。然而，这种特征在个体、物种和任务类型之间可能存在很大差异，目前还不清楚它是否是由系统发育相关性、进食生态、社会结构或代谢率来解释。为了阐明这些假设，我们评估了卷尾猴的时间偏好，卷尾猴是南美灵长类动物，尽管它们在大约 3500 万年前就从人类谱系中分离出来，但表现出与类人猿惊人的行为相似性。然后，我们用相同的程序将卷尾猴的表现与迄今为止测试的其他灵长类动物的表现进行了比较。总体而言，卷尾猴表现出的延迟耐受性明显高于狨猴和狨猴等密切相关的物种，并且与类人猿相当。卷尾猴的工具使用能力可能解释了它们在跨期选择中对延迟选择的相对较高的偏好。此外，与人类一样，雌性卷尾猴表现出比雄性更大的延迟容忍度，这可能是因为它们的机会主义觅食方式较少。因此，我们的结果揭示了自我控制的进化起源，支持了从进食生态学角度对延迟耐受性的解释。 (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. 保留所有权利。
Both human and non-human animals often face decisions between options available at different times, and the capacity of delaying gratification has usually been considered one of the features distinguishing humans from other animals. However, this characteristic can widely vary across individuals, species, and types of task and it is still unclear whether it is accounted for by phylogenetic relatedness, feeding ecology, social structure, or metabolic rate. To disentangle these hypotheses, we evaluated temporal preferences in capuchin monkeys, South-American primates that, despite splitting off from human lineage approximately 35 million years ago, show striking behavioural analogies with the great apes. Then, we compared capuchins' performance with that of the other primate species tested so far with the same procedure. Overall, capuchins showed a delay tolerance significantly higher than closely related species, such as marmosets and tamarins, and comparable to that shown by great apes. Capuchins' tool use abilities might explain their comparatively high preference for delayed options in inter-temporal choices. Moreover, as in humans, capuchin females showed a greater delay tolerance than males, possibly because of their less opportunistic foraging style. Thus, our results shed light on the evolutionary origins of self-control supporting explanations of delay tolerance in terms of feeding ecology. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.