Cross-modal matching in the monkey

Abstract

Two experiments were performed to assess the monkey's ability to match objects across sense-modalities. In experiment 1, six monkeys were trained to match visual objects to tactile samples—samples and objects being identical for an experimental but not for a control group. There was no clear evidence of matching ability, presumably because all the animals disregarded the tactile samples. In experiment 2, these monkeys were trained to match tactile objects to visual samples— again samples and objects being identical for the experimental but not for the control group. Although animals were first trained to respond explicitly to the visual samples, only three animals performed well at the matching task. There was evidence that these animals might have learned a conditional mode of solving the matching task, so that no clear demonstration of cross-modal matching ability had been obtained.