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Chimpanzees demonstrate individual differences in social information use

Watson, S.K.; Vale, G.L.; Hopper, L.M.; Dean, L.G.; Kendal, R.L.; Price, E.E.; Wood, L.A.; Davis, S.J.; Schapiro, S.J.; Lambeth, S.P.; Whiten, A.

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Authors

S.K. Watson

G.L. Vale

L.M. Hopper

L.G. Dean

E.E. Price

L.A. Wood

S.J. Davis

S.J. Schapiro

S.P. Lambeth

A. Whiten



Abstract

Studies of transmission biases in social learning have greatly informed our understanding of how behaviour patterns may diffuse through animal populations, yet within-species inter-individual variation in social information use has received little attention and remains poorly understood. We have addressed this question by examining individual performances across multiple experiments with the same population of primates. We compiled a dataset spanning 16 social learning studies (26 experimental conditions) carried out at the same study site over a 12-year period, incorporating a total of 167 chimpanzees. We applied a binary scoring system to code each participant’s performance in each study according to whether they demonstrated evidence of using social information from conspecifics to solve the experimental task or not (Social Information Score—‘SIS’). Bayesian binomial mixed effects models were then used to estimate the extent to which individual differences influenced SIS, together with any effects of sex, rearing history, age, prior involvement in research and task type on SIS. An estimate of repeatability found that approximately half of the variance in SIS was accounted for by individual identity, indicating that individual differences play a critical role in the social learning behaviour of chimpanzees. According to the model that best fit the data, females were, depending on their rearing history, 15–24% more likely to use social information to solve experimental tasks than males. However, there was no strong evidence of an effect of age or research experience, and pedigree records indicated that SIS was not a strongly heritable trait. Our study offers a novel, transferable method for the study of individual differences in social learning.

Citation

Watson, S., Vale, G., Hopper, L., Dean, L., Kendal, R., Price, E., …Whiten, A. (2018). Chimpanzees demonstrate individual differences in social information use. Animal Cognition, 21(5), 639-650. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-018-1198-7

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jun 13, 2018
Online Publication Date Jun 19, 2018
Publication Date Sep 1, 2018
Deposit Date Jun 14, 2018
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Animal Cognition
Print ISSN 1435-9448
Electronic ISSN 1435-9456
Publisher Springer
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 21
Issue 5
Pages 639-650
DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-018-1198-7

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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
Advance online version © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.






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