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 have 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 non-human 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 that 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 they affect the performance of the monkeys in problem solving. We suggest that behavioural traditions affect the ways non-human primates solve novel foraging problems using tools.

文化对个体认知的影响现已成为文化灵长类动物学家（cultural primatologists）关注的核心研究议题。针对野生种群开展的野外研究证实了社会线索在非人灵长类动物工具使用个体发育过程中的作用，以及此类行为如何通过社会偏向性学习（socially biased learning）在多代种群间传递。近期的实验研究表明，文化知识可能会影响野生黑猩猩种群的问题解决能力。本研究呈现了一项野外实验的结果：该实验对比了来自两个拥有差异化工具技能组合的野生稀树草原种群髯卷尾猴（Sapajus libidinosus）在探查任务中的表现。仅那些惯常使用探查工具的种群成功解决了这一全新问题，这表明它们的文化行为库（cultural repertoire）塑造了其应对新任务的方式。此外，仅那些在更多场景中使用石制工具的种群，尝试借助石制工具解决该问题。社会互动会影响学习定势（learning set）的形成，同时也会影响猴子在问题解决任务中的表现。我们认为，行为传统会影响非人灵长类动物借助工具解决新颖觅食问题的方式。