Translational research into intertemporal choice: the Western scrub-jay as an animal model for future-thinking

Computational animal welfare: towards cognitive architecture models of animal sentience, emotion and wellbeing

To understand animal wellbeing, we need to consider subjective phenomena and sentience. This is challenging, since these properties are private and cannot be observed directly. Certain motivations, emotions and related internal states can be inferred in animals through experiments that involve choice, learning, generalization and decision-making. Yet, even though there is significant progress in elucidating the neurobiology of human consciousness, animal consciousness is still a mystery. We propose that computational animal welfare science emerges at the intersection of animal behaviour, welfare and computational cognition. By using ideas from cognitive science, we develop a functional and generic definition of subjective phenomena as any process or state of the organism that exists from the first-person perspective and cannot be isolated from the animal subject. We then outline a general cognitive architecture to model simple forms of subjective processes and sentience. This includes evolutionary adaptation which contains top-down attention modulation, predictive processing and subjective simulation by re-entrant (recursive) computations. Thereafter, we show how this approach uses major characteristics of the subjective experience: elementary self-awareness, global workspace and qualia with unity and continuity. This provides a formal framework for process-based modelling of animal needs, subjective states, sentience and wellbeing.

The influence of episodic foresight on delay discounting and demand for alcohol

BACKGROUND

There is a near-universal tendency to discount the value of delayed rewards relative to those available in the here and now. The rate at which future rewards become devalued over time, delay discounting, is an important individual difference variable related to impulsivity and is elevated in externalising disorders, including alcohol use disorders. Recent research suggests that vividly imagining personally relevant future events (episodic foresight) during an intertemporal choice task can attenuate the rate at which delayed rewards are discounted.

OBJECTIVES

The present study sought to extend these findings by examining the effect of episodic foresight on both delay discounting and alcohol-related decision-making.

METHODS

Forty-eight college students were administered both modified intertemporal choice and hypothetical alcohol purchase tasks during which personally relevant episodic future event cues or control imagery cues were presented.

RESULTS

Engaging in episodic foresight reduced both the rate at which delayed monetary rewards were discounted and initial alcohol demand intensity (but not other demand indices) relative to control imagery.

CONCLUSIONS

Findings suggest that the attenuating effect of episodic foresight on impulsivity may be limited to particular aspects of impulsive choice.

Prospection and the Present Moment: The Role of Episodic Foresight in Intertemporal Choices between Immediate and Delayed Rewards

Humans are capable of imagining future rewards and the contexts in which they may be obtained. Functionally, intertemporal choices between smaller but immediate and larger but delayed rewards may be made without such episodic foresight. However, we propose that explicit simulations of this sort enable more flexible and adaptive intertemporal decision-making. Emotions triggered through the simulation of future situations can motivate people to forego immediate pleasures in the pursuit of long-term rewards. However, we stress that the most adaptive option need not always be a larger later reward. When the future is anticipated to be uncertain, for instance, it may make sense for preferences to shift toward more immediate rewards, instead. Imagining potential future scenarios and assessment of their likelihood and affective consequences allows humans to determine when it is more adaptive to delay gratification in pursuit of a larger later reward, and when the better strategy is to indulge in a present temptation. We discuss clinical studies that highlight when and how the effect of episodic foresight on intertemporal decision-making can be altered, and consider the relevance of this perspective to understanding the nature of self-control.