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Enhanced recognition of emotional stimuli in the chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes)

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Abstract

Humans often have a better memory of emotional events than neutral events. From the comparative–cognitive perspective, we explored the enhancement of recognition memory by emotion in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) using a serial probe recognition task. In this task, we sequentially presented a list of pictures to subjects and then tested their recognition of specific pictures from within the list. We selected pictures of aggressive chimpanzees as emotional stimuli and less tensed, relaxed chimpanzees as neutral stimuli. In Experiment 1, we gave four-item lists to two young chimpanzees; one showed significantly greater recognition of pictures depicting aggressive chimpanzees than neutral ones. In Experiment 2, this chimpanzee was further tested using a recognition task with eight-item lists. The subject again showed better recognition of emotional stimuli than neutral. Furthermore, the presence of an emotional stimulus in the list also facilitated recognition of the neutral item immediately following it. Overall, although only one of the two chimpanzees showed enhanced recognition memory by emotional stimuli, this is the first demonstration of such a response in the chimpanzee. The findings are discussed in comparison with those of human studies.

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Acknowledgments

This study was conducted as a part of bachelor’s degree work by the first author. The study and the preparation of the manuscript were financially supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)/Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), Japan, Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (#16002001, 16300084, and 19300091). We thank Dr. Tetsuro Matsuzawa for his advice throughout the study and for kindly allowing us to use video footage of chimpanzees in Bossou as stimuli. We also thank Suzuka Hori for her help during the experiments and Dr. D. Biro for her reading of and comments on earlier drafts. Thanks are also due to the members of the Human Evolution Laboratory of Kyoto University for their valuable comments and the staff of the Language and Intelligence Section and the Center for Human Evolution Modeling Research at the Primate Research Institute for their care of the chimpanzees.

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  1. Language and Intelligence Section, Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University, 41 Kanrin, Inuyama, Inuyama, Aichi, 484-8506, Japan

    Fumihiro Kano, Masayuki Tanaka & Masaki Tomonaga

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  1. Fumihiro Kano
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  2. Masayuki Tanaka
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  3. Masaki Tomonaga
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Correspondence to Fumihiro Kano.

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Kano, F., Tanaka, M. & Tomonaga, M. Enhanced recognition of emotional stimuli in the chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes). Anim Cogn 11, 517–524 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-008-0142-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-008-0142-7

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