TY - JOUR
T1 - Visual categorization of surface qualities of materials by capuchin monkeys and humans
AU - Hiramatsu, Chihiro
AU - Fujita, Kazuo
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Fellows (No. 10J04395 ) to C. Hiramatsu and JSPS Grants-in-Aide for Scientific Research Nos. 20220004 and 25240020 to K. Fujita. We thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions to improve the manuscript. We are grateful to H. Kuroshima, T. Matsuno and A. Takimoto for initial training of the matching-to-sample task for the monkeys; to T. Matsuno for providing a program for the task; to N. Goda for providing programs for the analysis; and to H. Komatsu for helpful comments and discussions.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015.
PY - 2015/10/1
Y1 - 2015/10/1
N2 - Visually identifying and categorizing the material composition of objects before actually interacting with them is an important skill for operating smoothly and safely in the world. This ability is assumed to have been shaped by evolution; therefore, non-human animals should share similar categorization abilities. Little is known, however, about how non-human animals do this. We tested whether tufted capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) were able to visually categorize images that represented nine different materials (metal, ceramic, glass, stone, bark, wood, leather, fabric, and fur), and we compared their performance with that of humans. Capuchins showed excellent categorization abilities for images of fur, which is a familiar material to captive monkeys. Humans showed a tendency to confuse material categories that resembled each other visually and/or semantically. Correlation analyses on reaction time showed that both species made correct choices rapidly in selecting glossy categories like metal and ceramic compared with matte categories like fabric and stone, which contain minute patterns. Overall, our results suggest that monkeys share similar perceptual tendencies with humans in visual categorization of material images to some extent and the potential to categorize materials frequently encountered in their daily lives by visual observation.
AB - Visually identifying and categorizing the material composition of objects before actually interacting with them is an important skill for operating smoothly and safely in the world. This ability is assumed to have been shaped by evolution; therefore, non-human animals should share similar categorization abilities. Little is known, however, about how non-human animals do this. We tested whether tufted capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) were able to visually categorize images that represented nine different materials (metal, ceramic, glass, stone, bark, wood, leather, fabric, and fur), and we compared their performance with that of humans. Capuchins showed excellent categorization abilities for images of fur, which is a familiar material to captive monkeys. Humans showed a tendency to confuse material categories that resembled each other visually and/or semantically. Correlation analyses on reaction time showed that both species made correct choices rapidly in selecting glossy categories like metal and ceramic compared with matte categories like fabric and stone, which contain minute patterns. Overall, our results suggest that monkeys share similar perceptual tendencies with humans in visual categorization of material images to some extent and the potential to categorize materials frequently encountered in their daily lives by visual observation.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84940759764&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84940759764&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.visres.2015.07.006
DO - 10.1016/j.visres.2015.07.006
M3 - Article
C2 - 26325391
AN - SCOPUS:84940759764
SN - 0042-6989
VL - 115
SP - 71
EP - 82
JO - Vision Research
JF - Vision Research
ER -