Study claimed to show that monkeys show more cognitive flexibility than humans

Courtesy of Mysterious Uinverse - here's a study that is claimed to show that monkeys show more cognitive flexibility than humans. Both were taught a task that required picking three geometrical shapes in succession. But when the rules were changed so that they could just pick the final one and still receive a reward, all the monkeys adapted while most of the humans didn't. That was when the humans were American undergraduates - American children and members of a semi-nomadic Namibian tribe showed more adaptibility than the undergraduates, but not as much as the monkeys:

Press release:
https://news.gsu.edu/2019/10/14/monkeys-...gn=monkeys

Paper:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-49658-0

I haven't read the paper, but some things in the press release puzzle me, and I wonder whether the study is really measuring what they claim. In particular, I don't understand why "70 percent of all the monkeys used the shortcut the very first time it was available compared to only one human." How can acting in accordance with the new rules the very first time be anything to do with learning or flexibility? Doesn't it just mean that 70% of the monkeys had failed to learn or had forgotten the old rules?

Courtesy of Mysterious Uinverse - here's a study that is claimed to show that monkeys show more cognitive flexibility than humans. Both were taught a task that required picking three geometrical shapes in succession. But when the rules were changed so that they could just pick the final one and still receive a reward, all the monkeys adapted while most of the humans didn't. That was when the humans were American undergraduates - American children and members of a semi-nomadic Namibian tribe showed more adaptibility than the undergraduates, but not as much as the monkeys:

Press release:
https://news.gsu.edu/2019/10/14/monkeys-...gn=monkeys

Paper:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-49658-0

I haven't read the paper, but some things in the press release puzzle me, and I wonder whether the study is really measuring what they claim. In particular, I don't understand why "70 percent of all the monkeys used the shortcut the very first time it was available compared to only one human." How can acting in accordance with the new rules the very first time be anything to do with learning or flexibility? Doesn't it just mean that 70% of the monkeys had failed to learn or had forgotten the old rules?

Having looked at the paper, I think it makes more sense. During training, the third geometrical shape that had to be picked wasn't visible until the third stage of the test, so it couldn't be picked before then. The change of rules meant it was visible from the start. (That's the "availability" referred to above - not in the sense that the rules had changed and the shape now worked as a shortcut, but in the sense that it was now visible from the start rather than invisible.) Because during training it was the last shape to be picked before the reward, in a way it was a logical "shortcut." Its use by the monkeys was indeed an indicator of flexibility in using the information acquired during training, though not of learning - at least as far as the first trial under the new rules was concerned.