LIVE-SOCIAL-VIDEO REWARD MAINTAINS JOYSTICK TASK-PERFORMANCE IN BONNET MACAQUES

A number of studies have now indicated that monkeys of several species will perform hundreds of food-rewarded joystick tasks on a daily basi s. Our goal in this study was to identify the level of joystick task p erformance that could be maintained by 10 sec. of live, color video of a conspecific social group contingent upon the completion of a joysti ck task. The subjects were five individually housed bonnet macaques th at were highly experienced on joystick tasks. Performance with social- video reward was compared to that maintained by a 190-mg banana-flavor ed pellet reward and to a nonreward condition. Comparable levels of ta sk activity were maintained by both video and pellet reward, whereas t ask activity nearly ceased in the absence of reward. Four of the five monkeys increased their levels of task activity between the first and second weeks of social-video reward.