Deterioration of planning ability with age in Japanese monkeys (Macaca fuscata)
Publication Type: |
Journal Article |
Year of Publication: |
2006 |
Authors: |
N. Kubo, A. Kato, K. Nakamura |
Publication/Journal: |
Journal of Comparative Psychology |
Keywords: |
age factors, aging/physiology, animal behavior, animal behaviour. cognition, animals, feeding behavior, feeding behaviour, macaca, spatial behavior, spatial behaviour |
ISBN: |
1939-2087 0735-7036 |
Abstract:
To investigate the ability of aged monkeys to plan and the effect of aging on this ability, performance in a food retrieval task was assessed in aged and younger Japanese monkeys (Macaca fuscata). In this task, the monkeys had to retrieve food items by selecting from a set of 9 holes, each of which contained 1 food item. Results showed that task performance declined significantly with age. All monkeys showed, to a greater or lesser extent, some consistent patterns in their sequence of selecting holes for retrieving the food item. An analysis of these selection patterns indicated that the younger monkeys showed more consistent sequences in selection than the aged monkeys. Furthermore, success in the task performance correlated strongly with higher consistency in the sequence of selecting holes. The authors simulated performance for this task by monkeys without any strategies or plans. The results suggest that the empirical data were far more systematic than the simulated data. Thus, the authors conclude that Japanese monkeys have the ability to plan and that this ability to plan deteriorates with age.