The goal of this research is to determine some of the information that chimpanzees can recall and report about the nature and location of objects in outdoor environments. Four chimpanzees will be tested. The animals are uniquely well-suited for studies of recall memory. They have learned arbitrary visual symbols (lexigrams) that refer to foods and other objects, and some can use the lexigrams outside the context in which they encountered the objects. The following method will be used to assess recall memory. An animal sees an experimenter place an object in an outdoor location. Later, in its indoor cage, the animal can indicate to an uninformed person the type, location, quality, and other attributes of the object and who put it out. The delay between the cue-giving and response phases of the trial will range up to 4 weeks. To assess forgetting, some objects will be removed once the animal """"""""reports"""""""" them, whereas others will be replaced. In addition, tasks that an animal can solve in real life situations in the outdoor enclosure will be modeled for presentation to that individual in a computer format. Animals will manipulate a joystick to make a cursor hit a target on a monitor. Targets and/or barriers will disappear as soon as the animal begins to move. The questions are how much detail the animal remembers about the relative positions of targets, landmarks, and barriers, and how efficient its route is. The animal's route will be compared on a jump by jump basis to an optimal routing. The ability to recall information about features of the environment not present to the senses is important in human thinking, planning and communication, and this ability presumably had a major influence on the emergence and evolutionary development of humans, but to date there are almost no data on recall memory capabilities in nonverbal animals.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01MH058855-02
Application #
6165233
Study Section
Human Development and Aging Subcommittee 3 (HUD)
Program Officer
Kurtzman, Howard S
Project Start
1999-03-15
Project End
2002-02-28
Budget Start
2000-03-01
Budget End
2001-02-28
Support Year
2
Fiscal Year
2000
Total Cost
$186,996
Indirect Cost
Name
Georgia State University
Department
Miscellaneous
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
837322494
City
Atlanta
State
GA
Country
United States
Zip Code
30302
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Fragaszy, Dorothy M; Kennedy, Erica; Murnane, Aeneas et al. (2009) Navigating two-dimensional mazes: chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and capuchins (Cebus apella sp.) profit from experience differently. Anim Cogn 12:491-504
Leighty, Katherine A; Menzel, Charles R; Fragaszy, Dorothy M (2008) How young children and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) perceive objects in a 2D display: putting an assumption to the test. Dev Sci 11:778-92
Beran, Michael J; Beran, Mary M; Menzel, Charles R (2005) Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) use markers to monitor the movement of a hidden item. Primates 46:255-9
Beran, Michael J; Beran, Mary M (2004) Chimpanzees remember the results of one-by-one addition of food items to sets over extended time periods. Psychol Sci 15:94-9
Menzel, C R (1999) Unprompted recall and reporting of hidden objects by a chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) after extended delays. J Comp Psychol 113:426-34