Abstract
Primates have evolved to rapidly detect and respond to danger in their environment. However, the mechanisms involved in attending to threatening stimuli are not fully understood. The dot-probe task is one of the most widely used experimental paradigms to investigate these mechanisms in humans. However, to date, few studies have been conducted in non-human primates. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the dot-probe task can measure attentional biases towards threatening faces in chimpanzees. Eight adult chimpanzees participated in a series of touch screen dot-probe tasks. We predicted faster response times towards chimpanzee threatening faces relative to neutral faces and faster response times towards faces of high threat intensity (scream) than low threat intensity (bared teeth). Contrary to prediction, response times for chimpanzee threatening faces relative to neutral faces did not differ. In addition, we found no difference in response times for faces of high and low threat intensity. In conclusion, we found no evidence that the touch screen dot-probe task can measure attentional biases specifically towards threatening faces in our chimpanzees. Methodological limitations of using the task to measure emotional attention in human and non-human primates, including stimulus threat intensity, emotional state, stimulus presentation duration and manual responding are discussed.
Highlights
Faces are one of most important and salient social stimuli for primates
Response times were significantly faster for chimpanzee faces than baboon faces, (β = 0.04, SE = 0.01, Z = 2.49, p = 0.013) and chimpanzee faces than scrambled chimpanzee faces
We explored whether attentional bias effects were more evident at an early stage of the experiment by analysing the mean response times in the first session using Generalized Linear Mixed Model (GLMM)
Summary
Faces are one of most important and salient social stimuli for primates. They convey information about identity, age, sex, attention and emotion [1]. Humans display a wide range of facial expressions to communicate their emotions, including anger, fear, disgust, sadness, surprise and happiness [2, 3]. Similarity in human and animal facial expressions have long been thought to reflect similarity in basic emotions [4, 5]. The animal fear system has evolved to rapidly detect and respond to danger in the environment and is sensitive to threatening stimuli such as snakes and angry faces [6, 7]. Information from threatening stimuli is given attentional priority over other information [8]. This attentional bias refers to “differential attentional allocation towards threatening stimuli relative to neutral stimuli” [9] (p. 204)
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