This video shows two of the chimpanzees in Japan playing a matcher-mismatcher game. Each chimp waits for a start cue, then presses a left or right bar on their own screen. After both have pressed, they get feedback in the form of a blinking bar showing what the other chimpanzee picked. If they matched (both left or both right) one chimpanzee gets a food reward which they can eat right away. If they mismatched, the other chimpanzee gets the food reward. Statistical analysis shows that overall, the chimpanzees adjust their frequencies of choosing left and right to respond effectively to what their opponent does, until neither chimpanzee can adjust further and do better. (Video by Chris Martin, Courtesy of Primate Research Institute pri.kyoto-u.ac.jp) - Chimps Best Humans at Game Theory news.sciencemag.org/brain-behavior/2014/06/chimps-best-humans-game-theory As tough as it is to admit, chimpanzees are just better at some things than humans are. Scientists have previously revealed that our closest ape cousins beat us handily at short-term memory skills. Now, researchers report that chimps are also better than humans in simple contests based on game theory—a form of mathematics that deals with figuring out the best strategy when faced with a competitive situation. In the current study, published this week in Scientific Reports (1), chimpanzees at the Kyoto University Primate Research Institute in Japan played a hide-and-seek computer game (as in the photo above; video here: https://youtube/watch?v=FSf4gbongKc). Undergraduate students and West African villagers also competed separately; no speaking was allowed. Both human and ape gamesters sat facing away from each other; their job was to predict their opponent’s move. Chimpanzee winners were rewarded with apple cubes, while humans were given money. Game theorists have determined that there’s a limit to how often the game can be won—even if both players are making the best possible strategic moves. That limit is called the Nash equilibrium, after the Nobel Prize–winning mathematician John Forbes Nash Jr. The chimpanzees trumped the humans. They learned the game faster than their human counterparts and performed in line with the Nash equilibrium—hitting the theoretical benchmark. Chimpanzees, the researchers say, may be particularly good at the game because of their excellent short-term memories and talents for pattern recognition and rapid visual assessment. In the wild, the apes are also highly competitive, vying for dominance. Humans, on the other hand, are more cooperative. Reference 1. Chimpanzee choice rates in competitive games match equilibrium game theory predictions Scientific Reports 4, Article number: 5182 doi:10.1038/srep05182 nature/srep/2014/140605/srep05182/full/srep05182.html Abstract The capacity for strategic thinking about the payoff-relevant actions of conspecifics is not well understood across species. We use game theory to make predictions about choices and temporal dynamics in three abstract competitive situations with chimpanzee participants. Frequencies of chimpanzee choices are extremely close to equilibrium (accurate-guessing) predictions, and shift as payoffs change, just as equilibrium theory predicts. The chimpanzee choices are also closer to the equilibrium prediction, and more responsive to past history and payoff changes, than two samples of human choices from experiments in which humans were also initially uninformed about opponent payoffs and could not communicate verbally. The results are consistent with a tentative interpretation of game theory as explaining evolved behavior, with the additional hypothesis that chimpanzees may retain or practice a specialized capacity to adjust strategy choice during competition to perform at least as well as, or better than, humans have. Supplementary information nature/srep/2014/140605/srep05182/extref/srep05182-s1.pdf
Posted on: Thu, 03 Jul 2014 20:29:55 +0000