Effects of reorganization of the food-procuring behavior in the time deficit situation in primates

The organization of the food-procuring behavior inMacaca mulatto was studied under conditions of the time deficit. It has been shown that if the duration of performance of the alimentary behavior in the animals is restricted by 8 s, four ways of individual arrangement of their activity are observed: (1) stabilization of time intervals between the acts performed; (2) shift of the effectiveness of performance from the instrumental phase to the consumatory one of the reflex in the same animal in different experiments; (3) in the case of an individual experiment: an increased effectiveness of performance of one act (the instrumental or consumatory one) and a decreased effectiveness of the other; (4) an abrupt change in the tactics of motor responsiveness. All the behavioral phenomena revealed are believed to be connected with a voluntary and goal-oriented strive of the monkeys to obtain the maximal amount of food under the conditions of time deficit by way of the active (directly in the experiment) or latent (at the intersignal period) reorganization of their activity program.