Interest in nonsocial novel stimuli as a function of age in rhesus monkeys

Human cognitive and affective life changes with healthy aging; cognitive capacity declines while emotional life becomes more positive and social relationships are prioritized. This may reflect an awareness of limited lifetime unique to humans, leading to a greater interest in maintaining social relationships at the expense of the nonsocial world in the face of limited cognitive and physical resources. Alternately, fundamental biological processes common to other primate species may direct preferential interest in social stimuli with increasing age. Inspired by a recent study that described sustained interest in social stimuli but diminished interest in nonsocial stimuli in aged Barbary macaques, we carried out a conceptual replication to test whether old rhesus monkeys lost interest in nonsocial stimuli. Male and female macaques (Macaca mulatta; N=243) 4-30 years old were tested with a food puzzle outfitted with an activity monitor to evaluate their propensity to manipulate the puzzle i...人类的认知与情感生活会随健康衰老发生改变：认知能力逐步衰退，但情感体验愈发积极，且社会关系会被置于优先地位。这一现象或许反映了人类特有的对自身有限生命周期的认知，使得个体在认知与生理资源受限的情况下，更倾向于以牺牲非社交领域为代价来维护社会关系。另一种可能是，其他灵长类动物共有的基础生物学过程，会随着年龄增长引导个体对社交刺激产生偏好性关注。受近期一项研究启发——该研究指出老年巴巴利猕猴（Barbary macaques）对社交刺激仍保持兴趣，但对非社交刺激的兴趣有所下降——我们开展了一项概念性重复实验，以验证老年恒河猴是否会丧失对非社交刺激的兴趣。我们对243只年龄介于4至30岁的雌雄恒河猴（Macaca mulatta）开展了测试：为其配备活动监测器的食物谜题装置，用以评估它们操控该谜题的行为倾向……