Friend or Foe?: A primate model of social cognition

摘要

We developed a novel non-verbal animal experimental paradigm to examine the neural mechanism of discriminating friends and foes. We trained a macaque monkey to choose 'friend symbol' when characters helped each other and to choose 'foe symbol' when they hindered until reaching a criterion. We found that the number of trials to reach criterion was reduced when new scenes were introduced after learning the initial training scene. Saving of learning is not explained only by a conditional response, but generalization of social cognition.