Page 47 - Demo

Sexually selective cognition in primates452used eye-tracking to investigate topics such as attention to emotions (Pritsch et al., 2017), the effect of familiarity on attention (Lewis et al., 2021), theory of mind (Krupenye et al., 2016), and memory (Kano & Hirata, 2015) in great apes, no eyetracking studies have systematically investigated sexually selective cognition. Future studies could further explore this line of research.MemoryTo date, only one study has explicitly investigated memory for mate-relevant stimuli in primates. Lacreuse et al. (2007) presented rhesus macaque females with a delayed recognition span task at different points during their menstrual cycle, where they had to memorize the faces of conspecific males or females. In this task, individuals need to identify new stimuli in a grid that contains an increasing number of stimuli. For instance, the grid first contains one stimulus that the individual needs to click on to obtain a reward. Next, a second stimulus appears on the grid, and the individual obtains a reward only if they click the new stimulus in the grid. This process proceeds until the individual makes a mistake. Interestingly, the authors found no difference in recognition memory for male and female faces, and this effect did not change across the menstrual cycle. However, the overall accuracy was not significantly higher than chance level, which suggests that the task may not be the most appropriate way to study memory for faces in primates.An additional paradigm that can be used is the delayed match-to-sample task, which has been applied to investigate working memory (Lind et al., 2015) and categorization abilities (Vonk, 2013). In this paradigm, individuals first see a sample image they need to click to start the trial. After a short delay, two (or more) images appear on the screen, one of which is similar to the sample image. Selecting this “correct” image results in a reward for the individual. Vonk (2013) has employed this paradigm to investigate species categorization abilities in orangutans, showing that they can rapidly learn to match images depicting similar species. Employing this approach, it would be possible to test whether primates can better memorize pictures that contain mate-relevant cues. If they reach higher accuracy in trials where they are presented with pictures that contain indicators of high mate quality, this may indicate an enhanced memory of such information.Tom Roth.indd 45 08-01-2024 10:41