Increasingly, researchers are moving animal cognitive research into wild field settings. A field-based approach offers a valuable complement to laboratory-based studies, as it enables researchers to work with animals in their natural environments and indicates whether cognitive abilities found in captive subjects are generalizable to wild animals. It is thus important to field-based research to clarify which cognitive tasks can be replicated in wild settings, which species are suitable for testing in the wild, and whether replication produces similar results in wild animals. To address these issues, we modified a well-known lab test for field applications. The transfer index (TI) is a reversal learning task that tests whether animals rely on more associative or rule-based learning strategies (Rumbaugh in Primate behavior: developments in field and laboratory research. Academic Press, Inc., New York, pp. 2–66, 1970). In this paper, we detail changes needed to use a TI-like task in the field, here referred to as the Field Reversal Index (FRI). We tested a sample of nine wild vervet monkeys (Chlorocebus pygerythrus) on the FRI task at Lake Nabugabo, Uganda. We show that wild primates can successfully be tested on reversal learning paradigms, and present findings that reinforce previous conclusions from captive experiments. Our results indicate that vervets, like other cercopithecoids, rely on associative learning rather than rule-based learning. Further, our results are consistent with previous research that reports improved performance post-reversal in younger individuals relative to older individuals. The FRI enables researchers to test animals both in the wild and in captivity to facilitate direct comparisons between the learning abilities of captive and wild animals.

中文翻译：

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该领域的动物认知：野生黑长尾猴（Chlorocebus pygerythrus）在逆向学习任务中的表现。

研究人员越来越多地将动物认知研究转移到野外环境中。基于现场的方法为基于实验室的研究提供了宝贵的补充，因为它使研究人员能够在自然环境中与动物合作，并指出圈养对象中发现的认知能力是否可以推广到野生动物。因此，对于基于野外的研究而言，弄清哪些认知任务可以在野生环境中复制，哪些物种适合在野外进行测试以及复制是否在野生动物中产生相似的结果非常重要。为了解决这些问题，我们修改了针对现场应用的著名实验室测试。转移指数（TI）是一项逆向学习任务，用于测试动物是否依赖于更多的关联性学习或基于规则的学习策略（Rumbaugh在灵长类动物行为中：现场和实验室研究的发展。纽约，Academic Press，Inc。，第2–66页，1970年。在本文中，我们详细介绍了在野外使用类似于TI的任务（此处称为“野外逆转索引”（FRI））所需的更改。我们测试了九只野生黑长尾猴的样本（Chlorocebus pygerythrus）在乌干达Nabugabo湖的FRI任务上。我们表明野生灵长类动物可以成功地逆转学习范式进行测试，并提出了可以加强圈养实验先前结论的发现。我们的结果表明，像其他长尾类动物一样，黑长尾小猴依赖于联想学习而不是基于规则的学习。此外，我们的结果与以前的研究一致，该研究报告了年轻个体相对于老年个体逆转后的表现有所改善。FRI使研究人员能够在野外和圈养中测试动物，以促进在圈养和野生动物的学习能力之间进行直接比较。