Rhesus macaques expect others to dynamically update their representations of unseen objects

What do monkeys know about others’ knowledge? Lindsey A. Drayton, Laurie R. Santos. Cognition, Volume 170, January 2018, Pages 201–208. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2017.10.004

Highlights
•    Monkeys expect others to track a hidden object during a rotational displacement task.
•    Monkeys do not show a curse of knowledge bias.
•    Results are consistent with the hypothesis that monkeys represent what others know.

Abstract: Recently, comparative psychologists have suggested that primates represent others’ knowledge states. Evidence for this claim comes from studies demonstrating that primates expect others to maintain representations of objects when those objects are not currently visible. However, little work has explored whether nonhuman primates expect others to share the more sophisticated kinds of object knowledge that they themselves possess. We therefore investigated whether primates attribute to others knowledge that is acquired through the mental transformation of a static object representation. Specifically, we tested whether rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) expected a human demonstrator to solve a difficult rotational displacement task. In Experiment 1, monkeys watched a demonstrator hide a piece of fruit in one of two boxes. The monkey and the demonstrator then watched the boxes rotate 180°. We found that monkeys looked longer when the demonstrator reached into the box that did not contain the fruit, indicating that they expected her to be able to track the fruit to its current location. In Experiment 2, we ruled out the possibility that monkeys simply expected the demonstrator to search for the food in its true location. When the demonstrator did not witness the rotation event, monkeys looked equally long at the two reaching outcomes. These results are consistent with the interpretation that rhesus macaques expect others to dynamically update their representations of unseen objects.

Keywords: Theory of mind; Knowledge representation; Comparative cognition; Object knowledge