Yamamoto et al. (naomi) [done]

Question 1

what was the aim of the study

Answer 1

• to learn more about helping behaviour in chimpanzees.
  specifically:
• whether chimpanzees can understand the needs of conspecifics
• whether chimpanzees can respond to those needs with targeted helping

Question 2

define conspecific

Answer 2

members of the same species. in this study, refers to other chimpanzees

Question 3

define targeted helping

Answer 3

the help and care after understanding the need or the situation of others

Question 4

define altruistic

Answer 4

acting helpfully towards others without obvious benefit to oneself. an example of this might be chasing after a stranger in order to return a wallet without a guarantee of a reward

Question 5

define theory of mind

Answer 5

refers to our capacity to understand the intentions and needs of others.

Question 6

what is the method and design of this study

Answer 6

• a lab experiment. It took place in an artificial environment where the chimpanzees were seated at adjacent experimental booths
• Repeated measures design was implemented.

Question 7

what is the independent variable of the study?

Answer 7

if the helper chimpanzee could or couldn’t see the other chimpanzees condition

Question 8

what are the dependent variables of the study? how are they operationalised

Answer 8

• percentage of trials of what object the helper offered the recipient first
• percentage of trials where the stick or straw was given when it was/wasn’t needed
• operationalised as the items offered by the participants to conspecifics.

Question 9

what were the two situations in the study?

Answer 9

• In the first, the potential helper chimpanzee was able to see the other’s tool- use situation
• in the second they could not see.

Question 10

how was the behaviour recorded

Answer 10

The behaviour of the participants was recorded on video camera and was used to produce quantitative data; the number of correctly targeted offers per condition.

The video also captured the behaviour of the chimpanzees, such as how they moved, responses to gestures, as well as where they were looking while they sat in the experimental booths.

Question 11

what were the apparatuses used in the study?

Answer 11

• two adjacent experimental booths with a hole out to allow a chimpanzee to reach through
  
  • the transparent panel in the “can see” condition
  • the opaque panel in the “cannot see” condition
• tray of seven tools including a stick, straw, hose, chair, rope, brush, belt
• three video cameras to record all the behavior of the chimpanzees

Question 12

describe the sample in the study?

Answer 12

Socially housed chimpanzees at the Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University.

Previously taken part in perceptual/cognitive studies including helping behaviour similar to the present study’s settings.

5 chimpanzees: Ai, Ayumu, Pan, Pal, Cleo. They were familiar with the tool use task, tested and cared for in accordance with the Animal Care Committee.

The opportunity sampling technique was used.

• Ai (mom) with Ayumu (child)
• Pan (mom) with Pal (child)
• Chloe (mom) with Cleo (child)

Question 13

what is the control of the study?

Answer 13

all chimpanzees underwent the same tool familiarisation procedure (8 5-minute trials for each participant)

Question 14

describe the behaviours and data recorded in the study.

Answer 14

Data Recording:
‘Offers’ were counted when chimpanzees held out objects regardless of if whether the recipients took them. Only the first offer was counted. Participants’ behaviors were recorded using 3 cameras.

Behaviors:
1. Upon request offer: a tool is offered when the recipient requests. A request was when the recipient poked an arm through the hole.
2. Voluntary offer: help is actively offered without the recipient’s explicit request.
3. No offer: the tools are taken away without an offer.

Question 15

describe the procedure of the study

Answer 15

The helper chimpanzee had to offer the recipient chimpanzee the correct tool. 1 task required a stick and the other straw. The recipient chimpanzee obtained a reward: a juice box. There were 7 objects in the helping chimpanzee’s tray: stick, straw, belt, chain, brush, hose, string. First, the chimpanzee did condition 1 (can see). Next, the chimpanzee did condition 2 (cannot see). Then, they repeated condition 1 (can see) to check for order effects.

There were 48 trials carried out in each condition. 24-stick use and 24 straw-use trials were randomly ordered. There were 2 – 4 trials per day. A trial starts when the tray was presented to the helper chimpanzee. A trial ends when the recipient succeeded in obtaining the juice box or when 5 minutes had passed without receiving an object.

Question 16

what were the results of the first ‘‘can see’’ condition?

Answer 16

• Object offer = 91% of trials. In the familiarisation phase, object offer was 5%. ‘Upon request offer’ accounted for 90% of all offers.
• Except for Pan, sticks and straws were significantly more frequently offered the non-tools (78% - 97.4%). bias suggests that the chimpanzees were able to discriminate between potential tools and non tools
• Pan most frequently offered non-tool, brush, which may be due to past experience. when it was removed from her tray, she made appropriate tool offers similar to the others.
• Chimpanzees demonstrated flexible targeted helping depending on their partner’s tool-use situation.
• Cleo offered the stick or straw 97% of the time, and Pan offered the brush most frequently, in 80% of the trials.

Question 17

what were the results for the cannot see condition

Answer 17

• Object offer = 98% of trials. Upon request, the offer accounted for 71.7% of all offers.
• Cleo showed a significant increase in offering help in the ‘cannot see condition’ and this may be due to a carryover effect. This increased voluntary offer as the helper learned that they are expected to offer an object to their partner.
• Stick/straw was not offered more than the non-tools. Except Ayumu did as he kept peeking through the hole. This shows that chimpanzees understood their partner’s goals only when they could see.

Question 18

what were the results in the second “can see” condition?

Answer 18

3 chimpanzees who had shown a significant decrease in tool selection in the first condition and a non-significant decrease in the cannot see condition were used. Ai, Cleo, and Pal.

1. Object offer observed for 98% of trials. Upon request offer for 79% of all offers.
2. Significant decrease in the offer of stick/straw depending on the partner’s situation. This confirms that flexible targeted helping with an understanding of the tool need to complete the task was possible when chimpanzees could see the task for themselves.

Question 19

what was concluded in the study?

Answer 19

Chimpanzees can understand the needs of conspecifics in order to help them in successfully solving tasks.

• They will offer help to conspecifics who require it in the majority of cases, but usually as a response to a direct request rather than as a spontaneous act.
• Chimpanzees rely on visual confirmation of conspecifics’ needs in order to offer targeted helping.

Question 20

describe the procedure of the study

Answer 20

The helper chimpanzee had to offer the recipient chimpanzee the correct tool. 1 task required a stick
and the other straw. The recipient chimpanzee
obtained a reward: a juice box. There were / objects
in the helping chimpanzee’s tray: stick, straw, belt, chain, brush, hose, string. First, the chimpanzee did condition 1 (can see). Next, the chimpanzee did condition 2 (cannot see). Then, they repeated condition 1 (can see) to check for order effects.
There were 48 trials carried out in each condition. 24-stick use and 24 straw-use trials were randomly ordered. There were 2 - 4 trials per day. A trial starts when the tray was presented to the helper chimpanzee. A trial ends when the recipient succeeded in obtaining the juice box or when 5 minutes had passed without receiving an object.

Question 21

what are the strengths of the study?

Answer 21

High level of control and fully standardized procedures.
No confounding variables means that the cause and effect are much more likely to be shown. This increases reliability. Example, the tray of seven tools including a stick, straw, hose, chain, rope, brush and a belt was the same for each trial. The chimpanzees were also placed in a standardized booth of the same size with a hole cut to allow a chimpanzee to reach through.

Repeated measures design.
All chimpanzees participated in all experimental conditions, reducing any risk of individual differences. this Increases validity.

Quantitative data. Objective and scientific. therefore, Easier to interpret and compare

Ethical Issues were maintained. This study adheres to the ethical guidelines for animals such as housing that states animals should not be isolated or crowded and it is important to consider their natural environment and social behaviour of the species plus guideline of pain and distress that posits the avoidance of any procedure that results in any adverse effects on animals. This study was approved by the Animal Care Committee of the Primate Research Institute of Kyoto University. Furthermore, to avoid any possible distress, a familiarization phase of eight 5-min trials (one trial a day) where the participants could freely manipulate the objects in the experimental booth without any tool-use situation was carried before testing. This phase allows primates to get comfortable with the tools and environment of the study which will only result in natural responses being shown. The primates were also living in an environment that stimulates the lifestyle of wild chimpanzees, thus the approval of the study by an ethics board ensures that the task the chimpanzees were subjected to such as supplying a tool to aid a recipient in obtaining a reward did not pose any risk of danger to the chimpanzees.

Question 22

what are the weaknesses of the study

Answer 22

• low in ecological validity. For example, the study was conducted in a laboratory with the chimpanzees being tested in experimental booths. The recipient chimpanzee was required to obtain a juice reward using either a stick or a straw that was supplied by the helper chimpanzee in the adjacent booth.The experiment was conducted in a setting that is not natural for the animal or the behaviour being recorded. Additionally, the task of using the correct tool of either a stick or a straw to obtain a reward lacks mundane realism as such tools are not available in the wild. Therefore, it can be argued that the results from this study lacked ecological validity.
• Low on generalisability. The participants of this study included 6 chimpanzees who were all housed at the Primate Research Institute of Japan. All 6 chimpanzees had participated in similar studies and were chosen because they were experts in the two tool-use tasks used in this study. The sample size of only 6 chimpanzees makes it difficult to generalize the findings to other chimpanzees. Additionally, the use of chimpanzees who are highly trained and housed in a laboratory setting may suggest that the helping behaviour observed in the chimpanzees are less authentic as it could be due to the fact that they are highly trained and familiar with the task.

Repeated measures. For example, all the participants had to perform in all three phases of the experiment, which were the ‘can see’, ‘cannot see’, and ‘can see’ trials.Therefore, since all participants took part in all conditions of the experiment, there might be order effects, such as fatigue effect where participants become tired or practice effect, where participants become much better in the task due to practice. Order effects can cause participants to behave differently than how they normally would, hence repeated measures design is a weakness.

Question 23

how can this study be applied to everyday life?

Answer 23

It helps us understand more about chimpanzee societies, and we now know that chimpanzees have the capacity to help conspecifics.

Question 24

evaluate the use of animals in the study

Answer 24

• numbers: there were five pairings so the researchers probably used the least number of chimps possible to still fulfill the aims and goals of the study
• housing: the chimps were all socially housed at the primate research institute at Kyoto University. All of the chimps had participated in other studies about social behavior
• deprivation and aversive stimuli: none of the chimps were through any procedures that deprived them of food or used aversive stimuli to train them to complete the given task.

Question 25

explain the individual and situational explanation of behaviour within the study

Answer 25

Most chimpanzees showed similar patterns of behaviour. However, the influence of individual personalities was seen when Pan showed a preference for the brush and Ayumu peeked through the hole.

Question 26

explain why this study is from the social approach

Answer 26

how two chimpanzees interacted to solve a task (1), and to see how behavior was influenced by a social context of being able to see the other chimpanzee (1)

Question 27

explain one strength of using animals as participants in this study

Answer 27

• laboratory study, greater controls, allow cause and effects to be analyzed (1-2m)
• when using animals as participants, would allow greater control than humans because of the factors being exercised, humans are more intellectual. (1m)

Question 28

identify two characteristics of the sample used, other than that they were chimpanzees 2

Answer 28

• they were both female
• Had prior experience with visuomotor tasks.
• each pair was mother-child
• socially housed in the same place
• shown sharing behaviour before

Question 29

define empathy

Answer 29

Empathy - the ability to understand and share the feelings of another by imagining what it would be like if in another person’s perspective

Question 30

outline how one result from this study supports the concept of either altruism or empathy

Answer 30

• The ability of both chimpanzees, Cleo and Pan, to effectively use the gaze direction of a human experimenter to locate a food reward suggests that they were able to understand and respond to the communicative intentions of a social partner. This might suggest that they possess some level of social understanding or empathy.

Question 31

briefly describe what previous studies have found out about chimps targeted helping behavior

Answer 31

the chimpanzees have been found to help others upon request but they do not do it voluntarily at all times.

Question 32

explain why the chimps were suitable for this study

Answer 32

• they had previously taken part in studies that have displayed helping. behavior
• these chimpanzees were experts in the two tools presented in the study

Question 33

based on the findings from the study, what are the conditions necessary for conspecific helping behavior to occur?

Answer 33

• helper would unlikely be willing to help unless help is asked for
• the helper must be able to see the situation that the recipient is in to understand what the recipient needs

Question 34

give a brief description of the physical setup for this experiment

Answer 34

• the chimps were tested in adjacent experimental booths 135 x 142cm and 155 x 142cm
• a hole measuring 12.5 x 35 cm was in the wall divider
• 1m above the floor