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Social inhibition and behavioural flexibility when the context changes : a comparison across six primate species

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Amici_2018_SR_SocialInhibition_CC.pdf (1.369Mb)
Date
15/02/2018
Author
Amici, Federica
Call, Josep
Watzek, Julia
Brosnan, Sarah
Aureli, Filippo
Keywords
BF Psychology
QH301 Biology
QL Zoology
DAS
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Abstract
The ability to inhibit previously employed strategies and flexibly adjust behavioural responses to external conditions may be critical for individual survival. However, it is unclear which factors predict their distribution across species. Here, we investigated social inhibition and behavioural flexibility in six primate species (chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans, gorillas, capuchin monkeys and spider monkeys) differing in terms of phylogenetic relatedness, foraging ecology and social organization. Depending on the social context, individuals could maximize their food intake by inhibiting the selection of a larger food reward in one condition (i.e. inhibition), but not in others, which required them to flexibly switching strategies across conditions (i.e. behavioural flexibility). Overall, our study revealed inter-specific differences in social inhibition and behavioural flexibility, which partially reflected differences in fission-fusion dynamics. In particular, orangutans and chimpanzees showed the highest level of inhibitory skills, while gorillas and capuchin monkeys showed the lowest one. In terms of behavioural flexibility, orangutans and spider monkeys were the best performers, while bonobos and capuchin monkeys were the worst ones. These results contribute to our understanding that inhibition and behavioural flexibility may be linked in more complex ways than usually thought, although both abilities play a crucial role in efficient problem solving.
Citation
Amici , F , Call , J , Watzek , J , Brosnan , S & Aureli , F 2018 , ' Social inhibition and behavioural flexibility when the context changes : a comparison across six primate species ' , Scientific Reports , vol. 8 , 3067 . https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-21496-6
Publication
Scientific Reports
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-21496-6
ISSN
2045-2322
Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2018 The Authors. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Description
This work was conducted while the first author held a Humboldt Research Fellowship for Postdoctoral Researchers (Humboldt ID number 1138999). We acknowledge support from the German Research Foundation (DFG) and Leipzig University within the program of Open Access Publishing.
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  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/12828

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