NEIWORTH PRIMATE COGNITION LAB
Reactions by monkeys during a 3-day period when they were introduced to mirrors (and potentially, themselves).
Our first project after the monkeys arrived was to place small mirrors and video monitors inside their cages. They had never seen mirrors before and we wanted to capture their behaviors towards images of the self (mirror) or towards other monkeys with movement (video monitor). This led to a publication in 2001 after some fairly brutal fights with scientists in the field about whether the tamarins were showing evidence of self-awareness and what constitutes behavior expressed through self-awareness.
What can we conclude? Are tamarins aware of self, of other, and of information to be gained by attending to others' actions? Not exactly as we do. That's the short answer. But they use social information from others to figure out what to do.
Other questions related to a sense of self and other were pursued, so that we were not simply relying on use of a mirror to peek into the minds of monkeys to see what they thought about themselves and others. Visual co-orienting requires following an Other's gaze or pointing gesture -- being able to do this suggests that you understand the information obtained from joining another's perspective or following gestures for directing attention. We wanted to see whether tamarins compared the treats they received with those their cagemate received, and whether they would react when there was an inequity of quality of rewards between themselves and others (Social Inequity). Demonstrating a sensitivity of inequity suggests that you can compare what you got yourself and what someone else received, and can quantify that, which is a sense of self and other. And we used the Knower-Guesser paradigm to test whether tamarins could decide whose point to follow when two different people pointed to cups, and only one of those people was present when food was hidden in the cups (Theory of Mind).
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What can we conclude? Are tamarins aware of self, of other, and of information to be gained by attending to others' actions? Not exactly as we do. That's the short answer. But they use social information from others to figure out what to do.