Differences between chimpanzees and humans in visual temporal integration

Abstract

Humans have a superior ability to integrate spatially separate visual information into an entire image. In contrast, comparative cognitive studies have demonstrated that nonhuman primates and avian species are superior in processing relatively local features; however, animals in these studies were required to ignore local shape when they perceived the global configuration, and no studies have directly examined the ability to integrate temporally separate events. In this study, we compared the spatio-temporal visual integration of chimpanzees and humans by exploring dynamic shape perception under a slit-viewing condition. The findings suggest that humans exhibit greater temporal integration accuracy than do chimpanzees. The results show that the ability to integrate local visual information into a global whole is among the unique characteristics of humans.