ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2017
Synchronized practice helps bearded capuchin monkeys learn to extend attention while learning a tradition.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed.
- Stone tool use in a new population of semi-free-ranging robust capuchins (Sapajus spp.) at Monkeyland Primate Sanctuary, South Africa.Primates; journal of primatology · 2026Article
- Can I Have a Bite? The Influence of Infant Begging on Food Sharing in Capuchin Monkeys (Sapajus Libidinosus).American journal of primatology · 2026Article
- Instinct to insight: a variation-based framework to test hypotheses about how animals solve problems.Biology letters · 2025Article
- The basal area explains the abundance of stone tool sites reused by blonde capuchin monkeys.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Integrating culture into primate conservation.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Moving.American journal of primatology · 2025Article
- Insights into the evolutionary history of the most skilled tool-handling platyrrhini monkey: Sapajus libidinosus from the Serra da Capivara National Park.Genetics and molecular biology · 2023Article
- Editorial: Context-Dependent Plasticity in Social Species: Feedback Loops Between Individual and Social Environment.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- Revisiting the fourth dimension of tool use: how objects become tools for capuchin monkeys.Evolutionary human sciences · 2021Article
- Social learning exploits the available auditory or visual cues.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Bearded capuchin monkeys use joint synergies to stabilize the hammer trajectory while cracking nuts in bipedal stance.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2018Article
- The pervasive role of social learning in primate lifetime development.Behavioral ecology and sociobiology · 2018Review
- How Prediction Based on Sequence Detection in the Cerebellum Led to the Origins of Stone Tools, Language, and Culture and, Thereby, to the Rise of HomoFrontiers in cellular neuroscience · 2018Article
- The extension of biology through culture.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2017Article
- Culture extends the scope of evolutionary biology in the great apes.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Culture extends biology in that the setting of development shapes the traditions that individuals learn, and over time, traditions evolve as occasional variations are learned by others. In humans, interactions with others impact the development of cognitive processes, such as sustained attention, that shape how individuals learn as well as what they learn. Thus, learning itself is impacted by culture. Here, we explore how social partners might shape the development of psychological processes impacting learning a tradition. We studied bearded capuchin monkeys learning a traditional tool-using skill, cracking nuts using stone hammers. Young monkeys practice components of cracking nuts with stones for years before achieving proficiency. We examined the time course of young monkeys' activity with nuts before, during, and following others' cracking nuts. Results demonstrate that the onset of others' cracking nuts immediately prompts young monkeys to start handling and percussing nuts, and they continue these activities while others are cracking. When others stop cracking nuts, young monkeys sustain the uncommon actions of percussing and striking nuts for shorter periods than the more common actions of handling nuts. We conclude that nut-cracking by adults can promote the development of sustained attention for the critical but less common actions that young monkeys must practice to learn this traditional skill. This work suggests that in nonhuman species, as in humans, socially specified settings of development impact learning processes as well as learning outcomes. Nonhumans, like humans, may be culturally variable learners.
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