Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? Theory of mind is a term coined by Premack and Woodruff referring to the ability to attribute mental states and interpret behavior of others. It is the understanding that not everyone knows and thinks the same, highlighting behavior such as deceit, imagination and communication. Research has shown that children display an early understanding of a theory of mind, from around age four. However researchers were also interested in whether close relatives, such as apes, also have a theory of mind.
Introduction As our closest living ancestors, bonobos (Pan Americus) and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) have often been used as an ancestral model to study social and cultural hominoid behavior. Chimpanzees and Bonobos' DNA differs only 1% from humans yet their social behavior is very primitive and different compared to humans. Molecular studies indicate that humans, chimpanzees, and bonobos are very closely related in a lineage that split into hominid and Pan lines approximately 6-7 million years ago, possibly following a divergence from the gorilla lineage about 1– 2 million years earlier (Caccone and Powell, 1989). Chimpanzees are great apes, under the Homo lineage, that have been known for their male dominant, meat eating and generally violent culture. Meanwhile bonobos, also great apes, are on a completely different behavior spectrum, they are a female dominant, more peaceful, and heavily sexually oriented society.
Reproductive strategies in organisms refer to behaviors which work to optimize an individual’s fitness or reproductive success. Robert M. Sapolsky’s book, A Primate’s Memoir, illustrates reproductive strategies employed by male and female savannah baboons of East Africa, both within and between the sexes. Such strategies include both mating strategies and parenting/child-care strategies which work to increase the ability of a baboon to survive, produce, and care for viable offspring. These strategies can be adequately interpreted by N. Tinbergen’s theoretical framework. According to Tinbergen, there are four main categories for explaining behavior.
Originally scientists thought they knew exactly what brains were made of. However, those scientists made this assumption based on very little evidence. Scientists thought that all mammalian brains were made of the same weight with a number of neurons that were always proportional to the size of the brain. For example taking two similar size brains, one of a cow and another of a chimpanzee, they would have similar cognitive abilities. However, most people would say that chimpanzees are much superior and are capable of more complex tasks.
Aims and context (Put aims of study & background history): The aim of the study was to answer the question to what extent (how much) might another species be able to use human language? One way to test this was to teach a form of human language to a non-human animal. Gardner & Gardner aimed to investigate if they could teach a chimpanzee (considered to be a most intelligent and sociable animal) to communicate using a human language, specifically that of American Sign Language. Context - Language makes us unique as an animal, Chomsky (1965) believes language is unique to humans, other species can’t acquire language, humans have a language acquisition device, animals don’t. Early attempts to teach chimps to talk were useless, a chimp’s vocal apparatus is unsuited to making speech sounds, however the Gardners felt that chimps can use a non-spoken language like ASL, this language is used by the deaf in America.
The chimps socially are divided into groups with subgroups. Behaviors and culture will also vary according to the different communities of the chimps, not by much though. But since primates are social animals they will adapt to their surroundings and behave accordingly. Stated in the article, the chimps teach each other by example, and after a certain age its either you get it or you don’t. This again, is a something that applies us humans as well.
* Physiology - _The branch of biology that describes the functions of living organisms and their parts_ * Mirror Neurons: May play a vital role in the ability to learn from and empathize with another person. A neuron that fires when an animal (or person) performs an action or when the animal observes someone else perform the same action. Your mirror neurons fire as though it was you who had actually been doing the action * Gallese (1996)-Mirror Neurons Aim: Conducted research on motor neurons Because neural messages are electrical, they were able to hear the crackle of electrical signal when neuron was activated. Procedure: The isolated the neural response in rhesus monkeys reaching for food. Findings: When monkey reached for food the crackling noise was heard.
Can Chimps talk? Many researchers feel that chimps may be very similar to humans that they may be able to understand and communicate with us by using a sign that we understand. In order to find out whether chimps are capable of understanding either human language or sign language, they picked some chimps to do some experiments. 1) Washoe, one of the chimps used in the experiment, was about 10 months old when she arrived in the University of Nevada. At that time, Washoe was able to use 133 signs such as “open, come, good, hurry, hide, okay” and etc.
Pepito M. Alipao III Ms. Kaye Lim BSHRM 2-1 RESEARCH PAPERS Introduction: This research paper let you know all about the thing you need to know on primates. This will also inform you all the type of primates. This will also let you learn all about the new world monkeys and old world monkeys. And also where they came from and what do they do and how do they do to survive their everyday life. A primate is a member of the biological order Primates, the group that contains prosimians) and simians With the exception of humans, who inhabit every continent on Earth, most primates live in tropical or subtropical regions of the
Some of these psychologists believed that “ the basic principles of learning, or acquisition of new behaviour, would be the same in any organism.” (Mc Leod 1993) Because of this belief they set out to understand the psychology of people by observing the behaviours of animals. In the early 1900’s the behaviourist movement was viewed by many people in counseling and psychotherapy as “an impoverished and inadequate vision or image of the human person.” (Mc Leod 1993) However, this movement did have an impact on the upcoming counselors of that era who had a psychology background, in that, they developed behavioural thinking and attitudes. In 1948, Edward Tolman carried out a series of experiments which led them to believe that a stimulus-response model was insufficient to account for behaviour and argued that some form of cognition must have taken place. This then led to the introduction of cognition to behavioural psychology. Throughout their history, behavioural psychologists have looked for ways to link behaviour to psychological and emotional problems.