Primates perceive many object features through vision and touch. To date, little is known on how the synergy of these two sensory modalities contributes to enhance object recognition. Here, we investigated in capuchin monkeys (N = 12) whether manipulating objects and retaining tactile information enhanced visual recognition of geometrical object properties on different scales. Capuchins were trained to visually select the rewarded one of two objects differing in size, shape (larger-scale) or surface structure (smaller-scale). Objects were explored in two experimental conditions: the Sight condition prevented capuchins from touching the chosen object; the Sight and Touch condition allowed them to touch the selected object. Our results indicated that tactile information increased the capuchins' learning speed for visual discrimination of object features. Moreover, the capuchins' learning speed was higher in both size and shape discrimination compared to surface discrimination regardless of the availability of tactile input. Overall, our data demonstrated that the acquisition of tactile information about object features was advantageous for the capuchins and allowed them to achieve high levels of visual accuracy faster. This suggests that information from touch potentiated object recognition in the visual modality.

中文翻译：

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触摸改善卷尾猴（Sapajus spp.）中物体特征的视觉辨别力

灵长类动物通过视觉和触觉感知许多物体特征。迄今为止，人们对这两种感官模式的协同作用如何有助于增强物体识别知之甚少。在这里，我们在卷尾猴（N = 12）中研究了操纵物体和保留触觉信息是否增强了对不同尺度几何物体属性的视觉识别。卷尾猴被训练在视觉上选择两个不同大小、形状（较大尺度）或表面结构（较小尺度）的对象之一。在两种实验条件下探索对象：视线条件阻止卷尾猴接触所选对象；视线和触摸条件允许他们触摸选定的对象。我们的结果表明触觉信息增加了卷尾猴的 物体特征视觉辨别的学习速度。此外，无论触觉输入是否可用，卷尾猴在大小和形状辨别方面的学习速度都高于表面辨别能力。总体而言，我们的数据表明，获取有关物体特征的触觉信息对卷尾猴是有利的，并使它们能够更快地实现高水平的视觉准确性。这表明来自触摸的信息增强了视觉模式中的物体识别能力。我们的数据表明，获取有关物体特征的触觉信息对卷尾猴是有利的，并使它们能够更快地实现高水平的视觉准确性。这表明来自触摸的信息增强了视觉模式中的物体识别能力。我们的数据表明，获取有关物体特征的触觉信息对卷尾猴是有利的，并使它们能够更快地实现高水平的视觉准确性。这表明来自触摸的信息增强了视觉模式中的物体识别能力。