"When it's simply a choice between getting the information earlier or not, the monkeys show a pretty strong preference for getting it earlier. But what we really wanted to do is quantify this preference," said first author and lead researcher Tommy Blanchard, a Ph.D. candidate in Hayden's lab.
In the video gambling experiments, graduated colored columns illustrated the amount of water that could be won. The monkeys were more curious about the gambles when the stakes--or columns--were higher.
The researchers found the monkeys not only consistently selected the gamble that informed them if they picked a winner right away, but they were also willing to select that option when the winnings were up to 25 percent less than the gamble that required them to wait for the results. "One way to think about this is that this is the amount of water the monkeys were willing to pay for the information about if they made the correct choice," explained Blanchard.
"That 25 percent was really surprising to us--that's pretty big," Hayden said. "These monkeys really, really want that information, and they do these gambling tasks repeatedly and never get bored of them--it's intrinsically motivated."
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