The PFC plays a central role in our ability to learn arbitrary rules, such as "green means go." Previous experiments from our laboratory have used conditional association learning to show that slow, gradual changes in PFC neural activity mirror monkeys' slow acquisition of associations. These previous experiments required monkeys to repeatedly…

A nonverbal false belief task was administered to children (mean age 5 years) and two great ape species: chimpanzees ("Pan troglodytes") and bonobos ("Pan paniscus"). Because apes typically perform poorly in cooperative contexts, our task was competitive. Two versions were run: in both, a human competitor witnessed an experimenter hide a reward in…

Zoo projects that encourage reflective learning and are legitimate undertakings for untrained undergraduates are hard to develop. In this article, the author, as a professor in anthropology, discusses and teaches primate studies. His pedagogical goal in teaching primate studies is to enhance the process of learning, and to consider that students…