The socioecology of primate cognition

灵长类认知的社会生态学

• 批准号: 341712-2007
• 负责人: Henzi, Peter
• 金额: $ 1.26万
• 依托单位: University of Lethbridge
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2007
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2007-01-01 至 2008-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=362733
• 关键词: socioecology; primate; cognition

It is generally agreed that primate brains and cognition are, in large measure, a product of social life. There is less agreement on both the particular nature of this social cognition and how we would recognise it if we were to observe wild primates for whom, after all, it has had the most evolutionary importance.   We argue that primate cognition has not been selected to allow animals to plan ahead by shoring up valuable relationships. It is, instead, an ability to respond rapidly to changing circumstances, without regard for the future, and to make use of the structure of both the social and physical worlds to reduce the cognitive load of decision-making.   To assess the accuracy of this perspective, our research program sets out to observe two monkey species in the wild in order to test a range of predictions about how individuals tap into available information in the social and physical environments and the extent to which their behaviour accommodates it. It builds on earlier theoretical and empirical work by concentrating on three different questions: How monkeys decide where to go each day and how they coordinate their movement; how females use grooming as a commodity with which to trade and how its value is regulated; how females regulate the reproductive behaviour of males and other females and how their ability to do so is set by the local environment.   This is essentially basic, academic research that has implications for the way we view human cognition.

人们普遍认为，灵长类的大脑和认知在很大程度上是社会生活的产物。对于这种社会认知的特殊性质，以及如果我们观察野生灵长类动物，我们将如何识别它，人们的共识较少。毕竟，对野生灵长类动物来说，它具有最大的进化重要性。我们认为，灵长类动物的认知并不是为了让动物通过支撑有价值的关系来提前计划。相反，它是一种对不断变化的环境做出快速反应的能力，而不是考虑未来，并利用社会和物理世界的结构来减少决策的认知负担。为了评估这一观点的准确性，我们的研究项目开始在野外观察两个猴子物种，以测试关于个人如何利用社会和物理环境中的可用信息以及他们的行为适应这些信息的程度的一系列预测。它建立在早期的理论和经验工作的基础上，集中在三个不同的问题上：猴子如何决定每天去哪里，它们如何协调它们的行动；雌性如何将毛发作为一种商品进行交易，其价值如何受到监管；雌性如何调节雄性和其他雌性的生殖行为，以及它们这样做的能力如何受到当地环境的影响。但这基本上是基本的学术研究，对我们看待人类认知的方式有影响。