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已成为文化灵长类学领域的核心研究议题。针对野生非人灵长类种群的实地研究，为社会线索在非人灵长类动物工具使用个体发育中的作用，以及此类行为通过社会偏向性学习（socially biased learning）跨代传递的机制提供了实证依据。近期的实验研究表明，文化知识可影响野生黑猩猩种群的问题解决能力。本研究通过一项野外实验，对比了来自两个拥有差异化工具组合的野生稀树草原种群的胡须卷尾猴（Sapajus libidinosus）在探查任务（probing task）中的表现，并呈现了相关实验结果。仅那些已形成常规探查工具使用习惯的种群成功解决了这一新问题，这表明其文化技能库（cultural repertoire）塑造了应对新任务的行为模式。此外，仅该种群——其在更广泛场景中使用石器工具——尝试使用石器解决该问题。社会互动会影响学习定势（learning set）的形成，并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使用工具解决新颖觅食问题的方式。