Data from: The effects of tradition on problem solving by two wild populations of bearded capuchin monkeys in a probing task

The effects of culture on individual cognition has become a core issue among cultural primatologists. Field studies with wild populations provide evidence on the role of social cues in the ontogeny of tool use in nonhuman primates, and on the transmission of such behaviours over generations through socially biased learning. Recent experimental studies have shown that cultural knowledge may influence problem solving in wild populations of chimpanzees. Here, we present the results from a field experiment comparing the performance of bearded capuchin monkeys (Sapajus libidinosus) from two wild savannah populations with distinct toolkits in a probing task. Only the population which already exhibited the customary use of probing tools succeeded in solving the new problem, suggesting that their cultural repertoire shaped their approach to the new task. Moreover, only this population, which uses stone tools in a broader range of contexts, tried to use them to solve the problem. Social interactions can affect the formation of learning sets and it affects the performance of the monkeys on problem solving. We suggest that behavioural traditions affect the ways nonhuman primates solve novel foraging problems using tools.文化对个体认知的影响，已成为文化灵长类动物学家（cultural primatologists）关注的核心研究议题。针对野生种群的野外研究证实了社会线索在非人灵长类动物工具使用的个体发育（ontogeny of tool use）中的作用，以及此类行为通过社会偏向性学习（socially biased learning）在世代间传递的过程。近期的实验研究表明，文化知识可影响野生黑猩猩（chimpanzees）种群的问题解决能力。本研究展示了一项野外实验的结果：该实验对比了来自两个拥有各具特色工具使用技能库（toolkits）的野生稀树草原种群的胡须卷尾猴（Sapajus libidinosus）在一项探查任务（probing task）中的表现。仅已习惯性使用探查工具的种群成功解决了该新问题，这表明其文化技能库（cultural repertoire）塑造了它们应对新任务的行为方式。此外，仅那个在更广泛场景中使用石器工具的种群，尝试利用石器来解决该问题。社会互动可影响学习集（learning sets）的形成，并会影响猴子的问题解决表现。我们认为，行为传统会影响非人灵长类动物利用工具解决新型觅食问题的行为模式。