Effects of change in social content of video rewards on response patterns of bonnet macaques

Three individually housed bonnet macaques, with long-term experience in performing a joystick task with a reward choice of either viewing color video of a single bonnet group or obtaining a banana-flavored food treat, were presented with ima ges of a new group when they chose to view social video. The change produced absolute increases in responding for social video and enhanced preference for viewing social video relative to obtaining the food treat, supporting the view that the monkeys were strongly attending to the social content of the videos. (C) 2001 Academic Press.