Spatial Cues More Salient Than Color Cues in Cotton-top Tamarins (Saguinus oedipus) Reversal Learning

Animals living in stable home ranges have many potential cues to locate food. Spatial and color cues are important for wild Callitrichids (marmosets and tamarins). Field studies have assigned the highest priority to distal spatial cues for determining the location of food resources with color cues s...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of comparative psychology (1983) 2008-11, Vol.122 (4), p.441-444
Main Authors: Gaudio, Jennifer L, Snowdon, Charles T
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal
Animal behavior
Animal cognition
Animal Foraging Behavior
Animal Learning
Animals
Appetitive Behavior
Association Learning
Attention
Choice Behavior
Color
Color Perception
Cues
Female
Homing Behavior
Male
Mental Recall
Monkeys
Monkeys & apes
Motivation
Orientation
Psychological aspects
Regression analysis
Reversal Learning
Reward
Saguinus - psychology
Spatial Perception
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Summary:Animals living in stable home ranges have many potential cues to locate food. Spatial and color cues are important for wild Callitrichids (marmosets and tamarins). Field studies have assigned the highest priority to distal spatial cues for determining the location of food resources with color cues serving as a secondary cue to assess relative ripeness, once a food source is located. We tested two hypotheses with captive cotton-top tamarins: (a) Tamarins will demonstrate higher rates of initial learning when rewarded for attending to spatial cues versus color cues. (b) Tamarins will show higher rates of correct responses when transferred from color cues to spatial cues than from spatial cues to color cues. The results supported both hypotheses. Tamarins rewarded based on spatial location made significantly more correct choices and fewer errors than tamarins rewarded based on color cues during initial learning. Furthermore, tamarins trained on color cues showed significantly increased correct responses and decreased errors when cues were reversed to reward spatial cues. Subsequent reversal to color cues induced a regression in performance. For tamarins spatial cues appear more salient than color cues in a foraging task.
ISSN:0735-7036
1939-2087
DOI:10.1037/0735-7036.122.4.441