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Unit 4 Primates
Chapter 16
Learning and early experience in
primates
The Primate Advantage
• Observational
learning
• Efficient, safer,
involves memory
• Learn by operant
conditioning
• Produce specific
beh to receive
reinforcement
Tool use
• Adaptive mechanism
• Chimps use sticks to
get termites out of nest
• Use sponges to get
water out of holes
• Allows food to be more
varied
Tutoring
• Learn methods by
observing adults
• Mothers actively
instruct and correct
errors
• Imitating is innate
• Observational
learning is found in
mammals and birds
Critical role of early
experience
• Harlow’s work
• Method of deprivation
(isolation)
• Used rhesus monkeys
• They stay close to mom
for first 4 years, suckle,
and cling to her
• Contact comfort
• Attachment due to
nursing
• Babies given 2
artificial mothers
• 1. Wire and bottle
• 2. Terry cloth and no
bottle
• Ethical?
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•
Results
Infant fed with bottle
Cuddled with terrycloth
Needed contact comfort
to feel safe
• Essential to human
dev’t: touch, warmth,
security
• Breast feeding not
essential
Harlow’s 5 love systems:
•
•
•
•
•
1. Infant love leads to
2. Peer love leads to
3. Heterosexual love leads to
4. Maternal love
5. Paternal love
Principle of resilience
• Minimum amt of
socializing needed as
an infant to mature into
normal adult
• When monkeys were
placed back with their
mothers or peers as
infants, they were able
to dev’t normally again
Harlow’s work
• Mother deprivation
• Motherless monkeys
not good mothers
for first young
• Better for second
young (innate
abilities came out)
• Monkeys raised
normally for short time
and then separated
• Drastic negative effects
• Became depressed
• Slowed dev’t
• Reunion allowed baby
to return to normal
Conclusions to his study
• Peer dev’t and
mother extremely
important
• Shows connection
between genetics
and the environment
for gene expression
Deprivation in human children
• Orphanages and
institutions
• Lack mothering
• Children dev issues
and neg behaviors
• Children raised by
bad parents cont
cycle themselves
Role of play in dev’t
• Costs/benefits
• Costs: energy, risk
injury
• Benefits: motor skills,
social interaction,
exploration, dominance,
predation, competition,
fighting
• Occurs in birds and
mammals
• Clear signals to
indicate play vs. real
aggression
• Wag tail, rump in air,
hair down, high pitch
barks
• Play associated with
altricial species
• Play in primates
• Be able to fxn in
their environment
• Tree climbing, etc
• Social interactions
Do primates think?
• Self recognition
• Chimps use mirror
to investigate
themselves
• Bonobos,
orangutans, humans
• Only primates who
recognize
themselves
Concept learning
• Alex
• African grey parrot
• Showed that he
understands
concepts such as
colors and shapes
• Not just imitating