Attention and cue-producing behavior in the monkey.

Scientists worked with two monkeys in a lab. They wanted to see if the animals could learn to press a key that would show them a color cue.

The task was a compound-cue game. The key press produced two cues at once: color and line angle. Only the full cue told the monkey which lever would pay food.

Both monkeys quickly learned to hit the key to get the cue. After that, they picked the correct lever almost every time.

The monkeys used mostly the color part of the cue. Even when line angle was just as easy to see, color won.

Fushimi (1990) extends this idea. That team showed a monkey can watch a second monkey’s key presses and use those actions as its cue. The 1966 paper proved monkeys can make their own cues; Fushimi (1990) proved they can also read social cues.

Davison (1969) seems to contradict the finding. That study gave squirrel monkeys d-amphetamine and saw cue observing stop. The clash is only skin-deep. R et al. showed normal learning; C showed what happens when drugs break that learning.

Wolchik et al. (1982) came later and added a rule: if the cue is hard to see, learning fails. Their salience work pairs with R et al. because both tell us to make the important part of the cue pop out.

When you teach a client to look for a prompt or self-scan a visual schedule, you are building a cue-producing response. Make the key feature bright, high-contrast, or unique so the learner locks onto it. If attention drifts, check for medication side effects or low salience before you retrain.