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Primates’ Propensity to Explore Objects: How Manual Actions Affect Learning in Children and Capuchin Monkeys

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The Hand

Part of the book series: Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics ((SAPERE,volume 38))

Abstract

Humans and other animals have a strong propensity to explore the environment. When human infants, as well as other primates, face the opportunity to interact with the environment by manipulating objects, they may discover and learn the contingency between one action and its outcome. Thus, manipulation, as a form of spontaneous exploration, has a great biological significance, since it allows to discover and learn the relationship between action and effect, enabling humans and other animals to plan goal-directed tasks. How do the specific characteristics of the primate’s body influence this process? With its large amount of degrees of freedom, sensors, and nervous terminations, the hand is the main interface with the external world, and it profoundly influences the primates’ interaction with the environment. How does object exploration mediated by manual actions affect the acquisition of problem-solving abilities? To try to answer this question, we experimentally compared how children and capuchin monkeys (Sapajus spp.)—nonhuman primates well known for their manual dexterity and for being curious and highly manipulative—acquire new cause–effect relations through spontaneous manual exploration of a new environment. The experiments were carried out with the mechatronic board, an innovative device specifically designed to allow interspecies comparative research. The board allowed testing whether spontaneous manipulation of objects (not instrumental to achieve any specific goal) improved subjects’ ability to solve a subsequent goal-directed task by retrieving the knowledge learned during previous exploration.

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by FP7-ICT program (project no. ICT-2007.3.2-231722—IM-CLeVeR)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Unit of Biomedical Robotics and Biomicrosystems, Department of Engineering, Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma, via Álvaro Del Portillo 21, 00128, Rome, Italy

    Fabrizio Taffoni & Domenico Formica

  2. Unit of Cognitive Primatology and Primate Center, ISTC-CNR, Rome, Italy

    Eugenia Polizzi di Sorrentino, Gloria Sabbatini & Valentina Truppa

Authors
  1. Fabrizio Taffoni
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  2. Eugenia Polizzi di Sorrentino
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  3. Gloria Sabbatini
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  4. Domenico Formica
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  5. Valentina Truppa
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Fabrizio Taffoni .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Philosophy of Scientific and Technological Practice, Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma, Rome, Italy

    Marta Bertolaso

  2. Institute of Philosophy of Scientific and Technological Practice, Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma, Rome, Italy

    Nicola Di Stefano

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Taffoni, F., Polizzi di Sorrentino, E., Sabbatini, G., Formica, D., Truppa, V. (2017). Primates’ Propensity to Explore Objects: How Manual Actions Affect Learning in Children and Capuchin Monkeys. In: Bertolaso, M., Di Stefano, N. (eds) The Hand. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol 38. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66881-9_4

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