Chimpanzee Self-Control Is Related To Intelligence, Georgia State Study Finds

ATLANTA—As is true in humans, chimpanzees’ general intelligence is correlated to their ability to exert self-control and delay gratification, according to new research at Georgia State University.

The research finding relates back to the famous “marshmallow test,” an experiment originally performed at Stanford University in the 1960s. In the test, children are given the choice of taking a small, immediate reward (a single marshmallow placed in front of them) or waiting to earn a larger reward (two marshmallows). Previous research has found that children who perform well on the marshmallow test and other tests of delayed gratification tend to also perform well on tests of general intelligence.

Georgia State researchers Michael J. Beran and William D. Hopkins have found the same link exists in chimpanzees. In their study, published in Current Biology, chimpanzees performed the Hybrid Delay Task, which tracks how often chimpanzees choose to wait for a larger, better reward rather than taking a smaller reward right away. It also measures how well the chimpanzees managed to wait during the delay period, when there is a constant temptation to capitulate and accept the smaller reward.

The chimpanzees then completed the Primate Cognitive Test Battery, a test of general intelligence that measures a variety of individual social and cognitive factors, such as the capacity to follow pointing gestures.

Those chimpanzees who showed the highest levels of generalized intelligence were also the most efficient in the delayed gratification test. Intelligence scores were related not only to how often chimpanzees chose to try to wait for the better reward, but also to how well the chimpanzees could wait when they chose to do so. This was the first such study to examine the relation between general intelligence scores and delayed gratification abilities in chimpanzees.

“The fact that this link between self-control and intelligence exists in species other than humans may demonstrate an evolutionary basis for the role that willpower plays in general intelligence,” said Beran, lead author of the study. “Future research could clarify whether the relationship also exists in other primates and even non-primate species.”

The research was funded by grants HD-060563 and NS-42867 from the National Institutes of Health. Read the study here.

jumanjicola on February 10th, 2018 at 14:06 UTC »

The researcher who came up with the 'marshmallow test' has been trying to discredit it's original conclusion for decades because it's not accurate or a proper determination for anything.

The same kid who waits patiently for a second marshmallow might also instantly grab a cookie if given the same option.

babyfishm0uth on February 10th, 2018 at 12:58 UTC »

Delaying gratification depends as much on nurture as nature.

...being able to delay gratification is influenced as much by the environment as by innate ability. Children who experienced reliable interactions immediately before the marshmallow task waited on average four times longer—12 versus three minutes—than youngsters in similar but unreliable situations.

mvea on February 10th, 2018 at 11:31 UTC »

The post title is a cut and paste from the first two paragraphs of the linked academic press release here:

ATLANTA—As is true in humans, chimpanzees’ general intelligence is correlated to their ability to exert self-control and delay gratification, according to new research at Georgia State University.

The research finding relates back to the famous “marshmallow test,” an experiment originally performed at Stanford University in the 1960s. In the test, children are given the choice of taking a small, immediate reward (a single marshmallow placed in front of them) or waiting to earn a larger reward (two marshmallows). Previous research has found that children who perform well on the marshmallow test and other tests of delayed gratification tend to also perform well on tests of general intelligence.

Journal Reference:

Michael J. Beran, William D. Hopkins.

Self-Control in Chimpanzees Relates to General Intelligence.

Current Biology, 2018;

DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2017.12.043

Link: http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(17)31676-7

Highlights

•In humans, delay of gratification appears to be related to general intelligence •Chimpanzees completed an intelligence test and a test of delay of gratification •Intelligence scores were most closely related to delay-of-gratification efficiency •Factors that loaded most strongly on g scores were most related to delay scores

Summary

For humans, there appears to be a clear link between general intelligence and self-control behavior, such as sustained delay of gratification [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]. Chimpanzees also delay gratification [10, 11, 12] and can be given tests of general intelligence (g) [13, 14, 15], but these two constructs have never been compared within the same sample of nonhuman animals. We presented 40 chimpanzees with the hybrid delay task (HDT) [16, 17], which measures inter-temporal choices and the capacity for sustained delay of gratification, and the primate cognitive test battery (PCTB), which measures g in chimpanzees [13, 14, 15]. Importantly, none of the sub-tasks in the PCTB directly assesses self-control or other forms of behavioral inhibition. Rather, they assess areas of physical cognition (e.g., quantity discrimination) or social cognition (e.g., gaze following). In three phases of testing, we consistently found that the strongest relation was between chimpanzee g scores and efficiency in the HDT. Chimpanzee g was not most closely related to the proportion of trials the chimpanzees chose to try to wait for delayed rewards, but rather most closely related to how good they were at waiting for those rewards when they chose to do so. We also found the same strong relation between HDT efficiency and those factors in the PCTB that loaded most strongly on chimpanzee g. These results highlight that, as with humans, there is a strong relation between chimpanzees’ self-control and overall intelligence—a relation that likely reflects the role of successful inhibitory control during cognitive processing of information and intelligent decision-making.