Abstract
Several hypotheses propose that cooperative breeding leads to increased cognitive performance, in both nonhuman and human primates, but systematic evidence for such a relationship is missing. A causal link might exist because motivational and cognitive processes necessary for the execution and coordination of helping behaviors could also favor cognitive performance in contexts not directly related to caregiving. In callitrichids, which among primates rely most strongly on cooperative breeding, these motivational and cognitive processes include attentional biases toward monitoring others, the ability to coordinate actions spatially and temporally, increased social tolerance, increased responsiveness to others’ signals, and spontaneous prosociality. These processes are likely to enhance performance particularly in socio-cognitive contexts. Therefore, cooperatively breeding primates are expected to outperform their independently breeding sister taxa in socio-cognitive tasks. We evaluate this prediction by reviewing the literature and comparing cognitive performance in callitrichids with that of their sister taxa, i.e. squirrel monkeys, which are independent breeders, and capuchin monkeys, which show an intermediate breeding system. Consistent with our prediction, this review reveals that callitrichids systematically and significantly outperform their sister taxa in the socio-cognitive, but not in the non-social domain. This comparison is complemented with more qualitative evaluations of prosociality and cognitive performance in non-primate cooperative breeders, which suggest that among mammals, cooperative breeding generally produces conditions conducive to socio-cognitive performance. In the hominid lineage, however, the adoption of extensive allomaternal care presumably resulted in more pervasive cognitive consequences, because the motivational consequences of cooperative breeding was added to an ape-level cognitive system already capable of understanding simple mental states, which enabled the emergence of shared intentionality.
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Notes
Whether social influences on the acceptance of novel foods by adults (Visalberghi and Addessi 2000a, b, 2003; Addessi et al. 2007) also differ between callitrichids and their sister taxa cannot be decided conclusively on the basis of the data currently available. Addessi et al. (2007) found that in two species of cooperatively breeding primates, in marmosets (Callithrix jacchus) and in Goeldi's monkeys (Callimico goeldii), the acceptance of novel food was not increased by group mates eating either the same or different food, as compared to the mere presence of group mates not eating anything. In the same study, Goeldi's monkeys, but not marmosets, paid more visual attention if their group mates were eating the same novel food. However, different results might have been obtained if novelty levels had been adjusted more closely to species-typical affordances because the neophobic Goeldi's monkeys never tasted the new food in any condition, whereas common marmosets’ responsiveness was very high already in the presence condition, presumably resulting in a ceiling effect in the other conditions. Capuchin monkeys were tested in a similar setting (Visalberghi and Addessi 2000b), and the kind of food the group mates were consuming also did not affect the acceptance of novel foods. However, no comparison of the social influence alone is possible because the callitrichids, unlike the capuchins, were not tested in a control condition with novel food in the absence of group members. In addition, there is evidence that experimentally induced food aversions can be reversed through interaction with non-averse conspecifics in adult common marmosets (Queyras et al. 2000) and tamarins (Saguinus fuscicollis and Saguinus labiatus, Prescott et al. 2005), but comparative data from sister taxa are again lacking.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Adrian Jaeggi, Marta Manser, Claudia Rudolf von Rohr, Carsten Schradin, Charles Snowdon, Andrea Strasser and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments. This study was supported by SNF grants 3100A0-111915 and SNF 105312-114107.
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Burkart, J.M., van Schaik, C.P. Cognitive consequences of cooperative breeding in primates?. Anim Cogn 13, 1–19 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-009-0263-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-009-0263-7