Abstract
Navigation on a touch monitor in fingermazes and interception tasks in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

Iver H. Iversen, University of North Florida
Tetsuro Matsuzawa, Kyoto University

Navigation and search skills were examined in  two laboratory experienced chimpanzees, who previously had been trained to trace lines on a touch monitor in a finger-painting task. In the fingermaze task the subject  had to move an object  with a finger to a target while avoiding obstacles. Mazes of gradually increasing complexity were presented across sessions. Both subjects became very efficient in solving mazes, and the speed of  learned new mazes increased with exposure to more maze patterns. In the interception task, the subject had to move an object to a target that moved in a predictable pattern. Subjects developed an anticipatory strategy of moving the object to where the target would later arrive. Both tasks were completely automated with storage of movement paths for each trial.