Human Foraging Experiment Dataset

Chimpanzees are our closest living relatives and have been extensively used in research into the evolution of humans. Although chimpanzees and humans share many of the same cognitive abilities, how they compare in solving spatial tasks is unclear to date. Therefore this study conducted a human physical simulation method that resembles foraging patterns of chimpanzees to enable comparing these spatiotemporal cognitive abilities. Furthermore, this study aimed to interpret animal movement and spatiotemporal cognitive abilities by relating revisit intervals to cognitive processes such as learning and memory. For this, two variables, constancy and contingency, have been used to reflect search efficiency, and their values were used to make inferences about the cognitive abilities of humans and chimpanzees. Ultimately, this study investigated how the average patterns in revisit constancy and contingency relate to the spatiotemporal cognitive abilities of chimpanzees, and how this compares to those of humans. These results are highly valuable in addressing the aforementioned existing knowledge gaps, but the novel stimulation method additionally provides a great perspective for future research into animal movement. This dataset contains the data obtained from the human foraging experiment that was conducted for the Bachelor's thesis: "Using Recursive Movement Data to Study Animal Cognition: Assessing a New Method to Compare Spatiotemporal Intelligence of Humans and Chimpanzees ".