Chimps outsmart humans at simple strategy game

[link to www.cnet.com]

When it comes to simple strategy games, chimpanzees consistently outperform humans at tasks that involve short-term memory and predicting opponents' moves.

Technology have found that chimpanzees at the Kyoto University Primate Research Institute are consistently better at humans when playing simple competitive games.

In one game, called the Inspection Game, chimps and humans played a variation on hide-and-seek. In pairs of their own species (humans and chimps did not directly compete with each other for the study), the players sit back-to-back, each with a computer screen in front of them. After pushing a circle on the screen, they have to choose one of two boxes, right or left. They are then shown their opponent's selection.

Each player has a different role. The "mismatchers" have to choose the opposite of their opponent's selection, while the "matchers" have to choose the same as their opponent's selection. Each game lasted 200 rounds, and players that "won" a round were given a reward. In order to consistently win, players had to be able to anticipate their opponent's choices.

In game theory, there is a concept known as the Nash equilibrium. This means the balance that can be achieved when each player knows their opponent's strategies, but has nothing to gain by changing their own strategy. The 16 Japanese students participating in the study performed as e

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