Publications by authors named "F M Miss"
Towards integrating joint action research: Developmental and evolutionary perspectives on co-representation.
Neurosci Biobehav Rev
December 2022
Joint action has increasingly become a key topic to understand the emergence of the human mind. The phenomenon is closely linked to several theoretical concepts, such as shared intentionality, which are difficult to operationalize empirically. We therefore employ a paradigm-driven, bottom-up approach, and as such discuss co-representing the partner's and one's own actions as key mechanism for joint action.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA convergent interaction engine: vocal communication among marmoset monkeys.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci
September 2022
To understand the primate origins of the human interaction engine, it is worthwhile to focus not only on great apes but also on callitrichid monkeys (marmosets and tamarins). Like humans, but unlike great apes, callitrichids are cooperative breeders, and thus habitually engage in coordinated joint actions, for instance when an infant is handed over from one group member to another. We first explore the hypothesis that these habitual cooperative interactions, the marmoset interactional ethology, are supported by the same key elements as found in the human interaction engine: mutual gaze (during joint action), turn-taking, volubility, as well as group-wide prosociality and trust.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- Behavioral coordination in primates heavily relies on co-representation, where an individual understands both their own and their partner's actions simultaneously; however, this study found that co-representation actually hinders joint performance rather than helping it.
- The research explored whether social factors like grooming behavior, sociality, rank, or centrality could explain variations in co-representation among different monkey species, but these factors did not predict individual differences.
- The findings suggest that successful cooperation is more about learned behaviors from shared experiences rather than innate inhibitory control, indicating a need for better-designed tasks that promote, instead of inhibit, cooperation to study co-representation effectively.
Article Synopsis
- Human joint actions can be improved by understanding both your own and your partner's tasks, but sometimes this shared representation can lead to interference, hindering performance.
- Research on brown capuchins, Tonkean macaques, and marmosets in a joint Simon task showed that while corepresentation existed in all species, its impact on cooperation varied significantly.
- Marmosets, which breed cooperatively, exhibited the weakest corepresentation effect and the highest success in cooperation, suggesting that cooperative behavior and flexibility aren't solely tied to brain size but rather to the species' natural inclination towards cooperation.
Article Synopsis
- Dominance hierarchy is crucial in animal societies, but traditional methods of assessing it can be affected by various challenges like environmental factors and difficulties in recognizing individuals.
- This research utilized automated learning and testing machines (MALT) to track and measure the dominance dynamics among semi-free-ranging Tonkean macaques, revealing a strong correlation between MALT data and observed social interactions.
- The study confirms that MALT offers a reliable, low-labor approach for continuously monitoring dominance hierarchies, which can be beneficial for managing animal groups, even in fluctuating environments.