An experimental study of formation of a word by primates

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24653212
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Experimental psychology
• Research Institution: Nagoya University
• Principal Investigator: KAWAI Nobuyuki 名古屋大学, 情報科学研究科, 准教授 (30335062)
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: サル / 言語 / 単語 / 進化 / 概念 / スペル

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study examined whether monkeys can make serial responses in selecting symbols to name categories. One monkey learned to perform serial responses of two arbitrary defined symbols with more than 80% accuracy. Nevertheless, a generalization test for novel stimuli of the learned categories was not conducted yet. These results suggest that monkeys can form a word with arbitrary defined symbols. Obviously, however, a future generalization test will be required to propose that a monkey had learned categories.

Free Research Field

実験心理学