Are animals stuck in time?

Time Matters: Time Perspectives Predict Intertemporal Prosocial Preferences

The study utilizes the Chinese version of the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (ZTPI-C) and a novelty intertemporal prosocial discounting paradigm to explore the preferences of individuals with the Present Impulsive Time Perspective (PITP) and the Future Time Perspective (FTP) in intertemporal prosocial choices, and uncovers the cognitive mechanisms underpinning intertemporal altruism from the personality traits. The findings revealed: (1) The donation behaviors of both groups decreased as time delay rose, aligning with the hyperbolic model. (2) PITP individuals had significantly higher discount rates than those with FTP, and the scores of FTP individuals on the "Future" dimension of the ZTPI-C were positively correlated with the amount of money they were willing to forgo. These results suggest that time perspective, as a stable personality trait, can predict individuals' intertemporal prosocial preferences. Our research enriches the theory of intertemporal choices and extends the Perceived-time-based model (PTBM) to the domain of intertemporal social preferences.

Memory and Consciousness-Usually in Tandem but Sometimes Apart

Episodic memory, the ability to remember specific events from one's personal past, has been the subject of research for several decades, with a particular emphasis on its relationship with consciousness. In the December 2022 issue of Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology , Budson, Richman, and Kensinger shed new light on this complex topic with a comprehensive exploration of consciousness. In this commentary, I present three propositions about the relationship between episodic memory and consciousness: (1) Episodic memory is usually associated with conscious retrieval; (2) it is possible to have consciousness without episodic memory; and (3) episodic memory can be accessed without conscious retrieval. Drawing from studies conducted with nonhuman animals, I provide evidence to support each of these propositions and discuss how they relate to the theory presented by Budson et al (2000). Although some of my propositions differ from their views, their work has been valuable in stimulating ongoing discussions to advance our understanding of memory.

Consciousness, Memory, and the Human Self: Commentary on "Consciousness as a Memory System" by Budson et al (2022)

Philosophical theories have attempted to shed light on the intricate relationships between consciousness and memory since long before this became a major theme in psychology and neuroscience. In the December 2022 issue of Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology , Budson, Richman, and Kensinger (2022) introduced a comprehensive theoretical framework pertaining to the origins of consciousness in relation to the memory system, its implications on our real-time perception of the world, and the neuroanatomical correlates underlying these phenomena. Throughout their paper, Budson et al (2022) focus on their theory's explanatory value regarding several clinical syndromes and experimental findings. In this commentary, we first summarize the theory presented by Budson and colleagues (2022). Then, we suggest a complementary approach of studying the relationships between consciousness and memory through the concept of the human self and its protracted representation through time (so-called mental time travel). Finally, we elaborate on Budson and colleagues' (2022) neuroanatomical explanation to their theory and suggest that adding the concepts of brain networks and cortical gradients may contribute to their theory's interpretability.

Archaeological evidence for thinking about possibilities in hominin evolution

The emergence of the ability to think about future possibilities must have played an influential role in human evolution, driving a range of foresightful behaviours, including preparation, communication and technological innovation. Here we review the archeological evidence for such behavioural indicators of foresight. We find the earliest signs of hominins retaining tools and transporting materials for repeated future use emerging from around 1.8 Ma. From about 0.5 Ma onwards, there are indications of technical and social changes reflecting advances in foresight. And in a third period, starting from around 140 000 years ago, hominins appear to have increasingly relied on material culture to shape the future and to exchange their ideas about possibilities. Visible signs of storytelling, even about entirely fictional scenarios, appear over the last 50 000 years. Although the current evidence suggests that there were distinct transitions in the evolution of our capacity to think about the future, we warn that issues of taphonomy and archaeological sampling are likely to skew our picture of human cognitive evolution. This article is part of the theme issue 'Thinking about possibilities: mechanisms, ontogeny, functions and phylogeny'.

Evolution of Brains and Computers: The Roads Not Taken

When computers started to become a dominant part of technology around the 1950s, fundamental questions about reliable designs and robustness were of great relevance. Their development gave rise to the exploration of new questions, such as what made brains reliable (since neurons can die) and how computers could get inspiration from neural systems. In parallel, the first artificial neural networks came to life. Since then, the comparative view between brains and computers has been developed in new, sometimes unexpected directions. With the rise of deep learning and the development of connectomics, an evolutionary look at how both hardware and neural complexity have evolved or designed is required. In this paper, we argue that important similarities have resulted both from convergent evolution (the inevitable outcome of architectural constraints) and inspiration of hardware and software principles guided by toy pictures of neurobiology. Moreover, dissimilarities and gaps originate from the lack of major innovations that have paved the way to biological computing (including brains) that are completely absent within the artificial domain. As it occurs within synthetic biocomputation, we can also ask whether alternative minds can emerge from A.I. designs. Here, we take an evolutionary view of the problem and discuss the remarkable convergences between living and artificial designs and what are the pre-conditions to achieve artificial intelligence.

Fishnition: Developing Models From Cognition Toward Consciousness

A challenge to developing a model for testing animal consciousness is the pull of opposite intuitions. On one extreme, the anthropocentric view holds that consciousness is a highly sophisticated capacity involving self-reflection and conceptual categorization that is almost certainly exclusive to humans. At the opposite extreme, an anthropomorphic view attributes consciousness broadly to any behavior that involves sensory responsiveness. Yet human experience and observation of diverse species suggest that the most plausible case is that consciousness functions between these poles. In exploring the middle ground, we discuss the pros and cons of "high level" approaches such as the dual systems approach. According to this model, System 1 can be thought of as unconscious; processing is fast, automatic, associative, heuristic, parallel, contextual, and likely to be conserved across species. Consciousness is associated with System 2 processing that is slow, effortful, rule-based, serial, abstract, and exclusively human. An advantage of this model is the clear contrast between heuristic and decision-based responses, but it fails to include contextual decision-making in novel conditions which falls in between these two categories. We also review a "low level" model involving trace conditioning, which is a trained response to the first of two paired stimuli separated by an interval. This model highlights the role of consciousness in maintaining a stimulus representation over a temporal span, though it overlooks the importance of attention in subserving and also disrupting trace conditioning in humans. Through a critical analysis of these two extremes, we will develop the case for flexible behavioral response to the stimulus environment as the best model for demonstrating animal consciousness. We discuss a methodology for gauging flexibility across a wide variety of species and offer a case study in spatial navigation to illustrate our proposal. Flexibility serves the evolutionary function of enabling the complex evaluation of changing conditions, where motivation is the basis for goal valuation, and attention selects task-relevant stimuli to aid decision-making processes. We situate this evolutionary function within the Temporal Representation Theory of consciousness, which proposes that consciousness represents the present moment in order to facilitate flexible action.

No evidence for future planning in Canada jays (Perisoreus canadensis)

In the past 20 years, research in animal cognition has challenged the belief that complex cognitive processes are uniquely human. At the forefront of these challenges has been research on mental time travel and future planning in jays. We tested whether Canada jays (Perisoreus canadensis) demonstrated future planning, using a procedure that has produced evidence of future planning in California scrub-jays. Future planning in this procedure is caching in locations where the bird will predictably experience a lack of food in the future. Canada jays showed no evidence of future planning in this sense and instead cached in the location where food was usually available, opposite to the behaviour described for California scrub-jays. We provide potential explanations for these differing results adding to the recent debates about the role of complex cognition in corvid caching strategies.

The psychological foundations of reputation-based cooperation

Humans care about having a positive reputation, which may prompt them to help in scenarios where the return benefits are not obvious. Various game-theoretical models support the hypothesis that concern for reputation may stabilize cooperation beyond kin, pairs or small groups. However, such models are not explicit about the underlying psychological mechanisms that support reputation-based cooperation. These models therefore cannot account for the apparent rarity of reputation-based cooperation in other species. Here, we identify the cognitive mechanisms that may support reputation-based cooperation in the absence of language. We argue that a large working memory enhances the ability to delay gratification, to understand others' mental states (which allows for perspective-taking and attribution of intentions) and to create and follow norms, which are key building blocks for increasingly complex reputation-based cooperation. We review the existing evidence for the appearance of these processes during human ontogeny as well as their presence in non-human apes and other vertebrates. Based on this review, we predict that most non-human species are cognitively constrained to show only simple forms of reputation-based cooperation. This article is part of the theme issue 'The language of cooperation: reputation and honest signalling'.

The effect of age on discrimination learning and self-control in a marshmallow test for pigs

Both humans and nonhuman animals need to show self-control and wait for a larger or better reward instead of a smaller or less preferred but instant reward on an everyday basis. We investigated whether this ability undergoes ontogenetic development in domestic pigs (similar to what is known in human infants) by testing if and for how long nine- and 16-week-old pigs wait for a larger amount of their preferred reward. In a delay-of-gratification task, animals first learned that a small reward was hidden under a white cup and a large reward under a black cup, and then the delay to deliver the large reward was gradually increased. The results show that older pigs could wait longer for a larger reward than younger pigs (10.6 ± 1.3 s vs. 5.2 ± 1.5 s), thereby confirming our hypothesis of ontogenetic development of self-control in pigs. This self-control is likely to be regulated by the behavioural inhibition system and associated systems. Self-control or, more specifically the lack of it may be involved in the development of abnormal behaviours, not only in humans but also in animals. Therefore, research on self-control in decision-making might provide a new perspective on abnormal behaviours in captive animals.

An operant analog of food caching in the pigeon (Columba livia)

Although pigeons do not naturally cache and recover food items as found in members of the corvid and parid families, an operant analog of food caching and recovery in pigeons was studied in four experiments. Pigeons were trained to peck a caching key that added a fixed increment of time to the final duration of reinforcement obtained by pecking a payoff key. The same key served as the caching and payoff keys in Experiment 1, but separate caching and payoff keys were used in Experiments 2-4. In Experiments 2-3, each peck on a left red caching key added 0.5 s of reinforcement earned by pecking a right white payoff key. In Experiment 4, red or green caching keys appeared on different trials, with 0.5 s of reinforcement earned for pecking the red key and 1.0 s of reinforcement earned for pecking the green key. Pigeons showed an increased number of pecks on the caching key over ten sessions in Experiments 1-3 and more pecks on the green caching key than on the red caching key in Experiment 4.

Beyond social learning

Cultural evolution requires the social transmission of information. For this reason, scholars have emphasized social learning when explaining how and why culture evolves. Yet cultural evolution results from many mechanisms operating in concert. Here, we argue that the emphasis on social learning has distracted scholars from appreciating both the full range of mechanisms contributing to cultural evolution and how interactions among those mechanisms and other factors affect the output of cultural evolution. We examine understudied mechanisms and other factors and call for a more inclusive programme of investigation that probes multiple levels of the organization, spanning the neural, cognitive-behavioural and populational levels. To guide our discussion, we focus on factors involved in three core topics of cultural evolution: the emergence of culture, the emergence of cumulative cultural evolution and the design of cultural traits. Studying mechanisms across levels can add explanatory power while revealing gaps and misconceptions in our knowledge. This article is part of the theme issue 'Foundations of cultural evolution'.

The internal representation of temporal orienting: A temporal pulse-accumulation and attentional-gating-based account

Timing can be processed explicitly or implicitly. Temporal orienting is a typical implicit timing through which we can anticipate and prepare an optimized response to forthcoming events. It is, however, not yet clear whether mechanisms such as temporal-pulse accumulation and attentional gating (more attention, more accumulated temporal pulses) underly the internal representations of temporal orienting, as in explicit timing. To clarify this, a dual-task paradigm, consisting of a temporal orienting and an interference task, was adopted. Consistent with the temporal-pulse-accumulation and attentional-gating model, reaction times to the target detection of temporal orienting increased as the interference stimuli were temporally closer to the target, i.e., a location effect for temporal orienting. This effect is likely due to attention being diverted away from temporal orienting to monitor the occurrence of the interference stimuli for a longer time, resulting in greater temporal pulse loss and less accurate temporal orienting for conditions with later interference stimuli. The temporal-pulse-accumulation aspect in temporal orienting received further support by taking an explicit duration reproduction (containing a second temporal-pulse accumulation) as the interference task. On the one hand, temporal orienting became less accurate with increased temporal-pulse-accumulation overlaps between the dual tasks; on the other hand, two-way (one for temporal orienting and the other for duration reproduction), rather than one-way, location effects were observed, implying processing conflicts between the two temporal-pulse accumulations. Taken together, these results suggest that implicit and explicit timing may share common mechanisms upon internal temporal representations.

Great apes selectively retrieve relevant memories to guide action

Memory allows us to draw on past experiences to inform behaviour in the present. However, memories rarely match the situation at hand exactly, and new situations regularly trigger multiple related memories where only some are relevant to act upon. The flexibility of human memory systems is largely attributed to the ability to disregard irrelevant, but salient, memories in favour of relevant ones. This is considered an expression of an executive function responsible for suppressing irrelevant memories, associated with the prefrontal cortex. It is unclear to what extent animals have access to this ability. Here, we demonstrate, in a series of tool-use tasks designed to evoke conflicting memories, that chimpanzees and an orangutan suffer from this conflict but overcome it in favour of a more relevant memory. Such mnemonic flexibility is among the most advanced expressions of executive function shown in animals to date and might explain several behaviours related to tool-use, innovation, planning and more.

Old and New Approaches to Animal Cognition: There Is Not "One Cognition"

Using the comparative approach, researchers draw inferences about the evolution of cognition. Psychologists have postulated several hypotheses to explain why certain species are cognitively more flexible than others, and these hypotheses assume that certain cognitive skills are linked together to create a generally "smart" species. However, empirical findings suggest that several animal species are highly specialized, showing exceptional skills in single cognitive domains while performing poorly in others. Although some cognitive skills may indeed overlap, we cannot a priori assume that they do across species. We argue that the term "cognition" has often been used by applying an anthropocentric viewpoint rather than a biocentric one. As a result, researchers tend to overrate cognitive skills that are human-like and assume that certain skills cluster together in other animals as they do in our own species. In this paper, we emphasize that specific physical and social environments create selection pressures that lead to the evolution of certain cognitive adaptations. Skills such as following the pointing gesture, tool-use, perspective-taking, or the ability to cooperate evolve independently from each other as a concrete result of specific selection pressures, and thus have appeared in distantly related species. Thus, there is not "one cognition". Our argument is founded upon traditional Darwinian thinking, which-although always at the forefront of biology-has sometimes been neglected in animal cognition research. In accordance with the biocentric approach, we advocate a broader empirical perspective as we are convinced that to better understand animal minds, comparative researchers should focus much more on questions and experiments that are ecologically valid. We should investigate nonhuman cognition for its own sake, not only in comparison to the human model.

Distance- rather than location-based temporal judgments are more accurate during episodic recall in a real-world task

Definitions of episodic memory typically emphasise the importance of spatiotemporal frameworks in the contextual reconstruction of episodic retrieval. However, our ability to retrieve specific temporal contexts of experienced episodes is poor. This has bearing on the prominence of temporal context in the definition and evaluation of episodic memory, particularly among non-human animals. Studies demonstrating that rats rely on elapsed time (distance) rather than specific timestamps (location) to disambiguate events have been used to suggest that human episodic memory is qualitatively different to other species. We examined whether humans were more accurate using a distance- or location-based method for judging when an event happened. Participants (n = 57) were exposed to a series of events and then asked either when (e.g., 1:03 pm) or how long ago (HLA; e.g., 33 min) a specific event took place. HLA judgements were significantly more accurate, particularly for the most recently experienced episode. Additionally, a significantly higher proportion of participants making HLA judgements accurately recalled non-temporal episodic features across all episodes. Finally, for participants given the choice of methods for making temporal judgements, a significantly higher proportion chose to use HLA judgements. These findings suggest that human and non-human temporal judgements are not qualitatively different.

It is about time: Conceptual and experimental evaluation of the temporal cognitive mechanisms in mental time travel

Mental time travel (MTT) is the ability that allows humans to mentally project themselves backwards in time to remember past events (i.e., episodic memory) or forwards in time to imagine future events (i.e., future thinking). Despite empirical evidence showing that animals might possess MTT abilities, some still claim that this ability is uniquely human. Recent debates have suggested that it is the temporal cognitive mechanism (i.e., ability to represent the sense of past and future) that makes MTT uniquely human. Advances in the field have been constrained by a lack of comparative data, methodological shortcomings that prevent meaningful comparisons, and a lack of clear conceptualizations of the temporal cognitive mechanism. Here I will present a comprehensive review into MTT in humans and animals-with a particular focus on great apes. I will examine three of the most prominent and influential theoretical models of human MTT. Drawing on these accounts, I suggest that a basic way of understanding time might be shared across species, however culture and language will play a critical role at shaping the way we elaborate mental representations about past and future events. This article is categorized under: Cognitive Biology > Evolutionary Roots of Cognition Psychology > Comparative Psychology.

Everyday Thoughts in Time: Experience Sampling Studies of Mental Time Travel

Time is among the most important yet mysterious aspects of experience. We investigated everyday mental time travel, especially into the future. Two community samples, contacted at random points for 3 (Study 1; 6,686 reports) and 14 days (Study 2; 2,361 reports), reported on their most recent thought. Both studies found that thoughts about the present were frequent, thoughts about the future also were common, whereas thoughts about the past were rare. Thoughts about the present were on average highly happy and pleasant but low in meaningfulness. Pragmatic prospection (thoughts preparing for action) was evident in thoughts about planning and goals. Thoughts with no time aspect were lower in sociality and experiential richness. Thoughts about the past were relatively unpleasant and involuntary. Subjective experiences of thinking about past and future often were similar—while both differed from present focus, consistent with views that memory and prospection use similar mental structures.

Nonhuman sequence learning findings argue against Hoerl and McCormack's two systems of temporal cognition

Hoerl & McCormack propose that animals learn sequences through an entrainment-like process, rather than tracking the temporal addresses of each event in a given sequence. However, past research suggests that animals form "temporal maps" of sequential events and also comprehend the concept of ordinal position. These findings suggest that a clarification or qualification of the authors' hypothesis is needed.

Indicators and Criteria of Consciousness in Animals and Intelligent Machines: An Inside-Out Approach

In today's society, it becomes increasingly important to assess which non-human and non-verbal beings possess consciousness. This review article aims to delineate criteria for consciousness especially in animals, while also taking into account intelligent artifacts. First, we circumscribe what we mean with "consciousness" and describe key features of subjective experience: qualitative richness, situatedness, intentionality and interpretation, integration and the combination of dynamic and stabilizing properties. We argue that consciousness has a biological function, which is to present the subject with a multimodal, situational survey of the surrounding world and body, subserving complex decision-making and goal-directed behavior. This survey reflects the brain's capacity for internal modeling of external events underlying changes in sensory state. Next, we follow an inside-out approach: how can the features of conscious experience, correlating to mechanisms inside the brain, be logically coupled to externally observable ("outside") properties? Instead of proposing criteria that would each define a "hard" threshold for consciousness, we outline six indicators: (i) goal-directed behavior and model-based learning; (ii) anatomic and physiological substrates for generating integrative multimodal representations; (iii) psychometrics and meta-cognition; (iv) episodic memory; (v) susceptibility to illusions and multistable perception; and (vi) specific visuospatial behaviors. Rather than emphasizing a particular indicator as being decisive, we propose that the consistency amongst these indicators can serve to assess consciousness in particular species. The integration of scores on the various indicators yields an overall, graded criterion for consciousness, somewhat comparable to the Glasgow Coma Scale for unresponsive patients. When considering theoretically derived measures of consciousness, it is argued that their validity should not be assessed on the basis of a single quantifiable measure, but requires cross-examination across multiple pieces of evidence, including the indicators proposed here. Current intelligent machines, including deep learning neural networks (DLNNs) and agile robots, are not indicated to be conscious yet. Instead of assessing machine consciousness by a brief Turing-type of test, evidence for it may gradually accumulate when we study machines ethologically and across time, considering multiple behaviors that require flexibility, improvisation, spontaneous problem-solving and the situational conspectus typically associated with conscious experience.

Wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes troglodytes) exploit tortoises (Kinixys erosa) via percussive technology

Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), one of humankinds' closest living relatives, are known to hunt and consume the meat of various animal taxa. Although some researchers have presented indirect evidence that chimpanzees may also prey on tortoises, until now, direct observations of this behaviour did not exist. Here, we provide systematic descriptions of the first observations of chimpanzee predation on tortoises (Kinixys erosa). We made these unprecedented observations on newly habituated chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes troglodytes) of the Rekambo community, living in the Loango National Park, Gabon. The behaviour qualified as customary, that is occurring in most or all adult males, involved a distinct smashing technique, and resulted frequently in food sharing with other group members. Our observations shed new light on the hitherto little understood percussive technology of chimpanzees, and expand our current knowledge on chimpanzees' dietary and predatory repertoires with respect to reptiles. We also report a case of food storage and discuss it in the context of future-oriented cognition. Our findings suggest the need for more nuanced interpretations of chimpanzees' cognitive skills in combination with an in-depth understanding of their unique socio-ecological niches. They further emphasize the importance of nonhuman primate field observations to inform theories of hominin evolution.

Short-sighted greed? Focusing on the future promotes reputation-based generosity

Long-term thinking and voluntary resource sharing are two distinctive traits of human nature. Across three experiments (N=1,082), I propose a causal connection: Sometimes people are generous because they think about the future. Participants were randomly assigned to either focus on the present or the future and then made specific decisions in hypothetical scenarios. In Study 1 (N=200), future-focused participants shared more money in a public dictator game than present-focused participants (+39%), and they were willing to donate more money to charity (+61%). Study 2 (N=410) replicated the positive effect of future-focus on dictator giving when the choice was framed as public (+36%), but found no such effect when the choice was framed as private. That is, focusing on the future made participants more generous only when others would know their identity. Study 3 was a high-powered and pre-registered replication of Study 1 (N=472), including a few extensions. Once again, future-focused participants gave more money to charity in a public donation scenario (+40%), and they were more likely to volunteer for the same charity (+17%). As predicted, the effect was mediated by reputational concern, indicating that future-orientation can make people more generous because it also makes them more attuned to the social consequences of their choices. Taken together, the results suggest that focusing on the future promotes reputation-based generosity. By stimulating voluntary resource sharing, a central function of human foresight might be to support cooperation in groups and society.

Trying to make sense of rodents' drug choice behavior

Since the first experimental hint for the existence of "an actual desire or striving for the drug" in nonhuman animals by Sidney Spragg in the late 1930s, much effort has been expended by lab researchers to try to model in a valid manner the key behavioral aspects and signs of addiction in animals, typically in rodents (i.e., mainly rats and, to a lesser extent, mice). Despite much advances, there still remains a lingering doubt about the disordered status of drug use in rodents. This is mainly because drug use occurs in a particular setting where animals have access to a drug for self-administration but without access to other valuable behavioral options that could compete with and divert from drug use. Here I review evidence showing that enriching the drug setting with other behavioral options can dramatically influence the pattern of drug choices in rodents. Overall, access to other options during drug access can divert the vast majority of rats from continued drug use. Only few individuals continue to engage in drug use despite access to and at the expense of other options. However, there exist certain high-risk settings in which virtually all animals are vulnerable to develop a harmful pattern of exclusive drug use that can even become fatal in the long run if not discontinued by an outside intervention. Paradoxically, it appears that the behavioral trait that is hypothesized to uniquely render rodents vulnerable to the latter settings (i.e., a narrow focus on the local, current choice, with no consideration of the global pattern of choice) would also protect most of them from using drugs in other choice settings. I conclude with an attempt to make sense of this peculiar setting-specific behavior and with some general propositions for future research.

What can associative learning do for planning?

There is a new associative learning paradox. The power of associative learning for producing flexible behaviour in non-human animals is downplayed or ignored by researchers in animal cognition, whereas artificial intelligence research shows that associative learning models can beat humans in chess. One phenomenon in which associative learning often is ruled out as an explanation for animal behaviour is flexible planning. However, planning studies have been criticized and questions have been raised regarding both methodological validity and interpretations of results. Due to the power of associative learning and the uncertainty of what causes planning behaviour in non-human animals, I explored what associative learning can do for planning. A previously published sequence learning model which combines Pavlovian and instrumental conditioning was used to simulate two planning studies, namely Mulcahy & Call 2006 'Apes save tools for future use.' Science 312, 1038-1040 and Kabadayi & Osvath 2017 'Ravens parallel great apes in flexible planning for tool-use and bartering.' Science 357, 202-204. Simulations show that behaviour matching current definitions of flexible planning can emerge through associative learning. Through conditioned reinforcement, the learning model gives rise to planning behaviour by learning that a behaviour towards a current stimulus will produce high value food at a later stage; it can make decisions about future states not within current sensory scope. The simulations tracked key patterns both between and within studies. It is concluded that one cannot rule out that these studies of flexible planning in apes and corvids can be completely accounted for by associative learning. Future empirical studies of flexible planning in non-human animals can benefit from theoretical developments within artificial intelligence and animal learning.

Thinking in and about time: A dual systems perspective on temporal cognition

We outline a dual systems approach to temporal cognition, which distinguishes between two cognitive systems for dealing with how things unfold over time – a temporal updating system and a temporal reasoning system – of which the former is both phylogenetically and ontogenetically more primitive than the latter, and which are at work alongside each other in adult human cognition. We describe the main features of each of the two systems, the types of behavior the more primitive temporal updating system can support, and the respects in which it is more limited than the temporal reasoning system. We then use the distinction between the two systems to interpret findings in comparative and developmental psychology, arguing that animals operate only with a temporal updating system and that children start out doing so too, before gradually becoming capable of thinking and reasoning about time. After this, we turn to adult human cognition and suggest that our account can also shed light on a specific feature of humans’ everyday thinking about time that has been the subject of debate in the philosophy of time, which consists in a tendency to think about the nature of time itself in a way that appears ultimately self-contradictory. We conclude by considering the topic of intertemporal choice, and argue that drawing the distinction between temporal updating and temporal reasoning is also useful in the context of characterizing two distinct mechanisms for delaying gratification.

Cognitive Paleoanthropology and Technology: Toward a Parsimonious Theory (PATH)

Tool use in humans and hominins (i.e., extant relatives to humans) is unique in several respects. To date, no attempt has been made to review the main patterns of tool behavior specific to these species as well as to integrate them into a coherent framework. The aim here is to fill this gap by (a) identifying these behavioral specificities and (b) trying to explain the greatest number of these specificities with the lowest number of cognitive mechanisms. Based on this approach, this article provides a potential solution, namely, the PArsimonious THeory of hominin technology (PATH), aiming to account for the cognitive origins of 4 behavioral characteristics: transfer, complex tool use, secondary tool use, and tool saving. A key hypothesis is that the emergence of 2 breaking mechanisms—technical reasoning and semantic reasoning—could have boosted hominin technology. PATH offers an original framework for understanding the most archaic, human cognitive traits, thereby providing a good starting point for future investigation about the cognitive evolution of technology in the genus Homo.

Past and future regret and missed opportunities: an experimental approach on separate evaluation and different time frames

Decisions often imply trade-offs that force people to accept missing an opportunity in the past or in the future. However, it is not fully clear whether a past miss or a future miss elicits more regret. In a direct comparison, previous research had found support for the greater impact of future misses. In an experimental study with 216 participants, we replicated and extended previous research by testing the strength of the future miss in a separate evaluation and with different periods. Results show that, when evaluated separately, future misses caused less regret than past misses. However, future misses made participants change their feelings of regret more intensely than past misses did. Also, regret levels did not decrease when future misses were further away. Our findings support the strength of future misses on regret but also show contrasting effects when evaluated separately.

From minutes to days-The ability of sows (Sus scrofa) to estimate time intervals

Time estimation helps allocating time to different tasks and to plan behavioural sequences. It may also be relevant to animal welfare if it enables animals assessing the duration of a negative situation. Here, we investigated the ability of dry sows to estimate short and long time periods. We used a variant of the peak-interval procedure and the choice between 2 resources of different quality and replenishment rates to assess time periods in the order of minutes and days, respectively. In the minute-experiment, the sows were trained to expect an interruption while feeding at the end of an interval. Heart rate and heart rate variability slightly and continuously increased and decreased, respectively, towards the end of that interval. In the day-experiment, lasting about 60days, the sows were increasingly more likely to open the door to a high food reward on the correct day when this food reward was presented every fifth day. We conclude that the sows learnt to estimate time intervals of 5days after lengthy training but did not accurately learn intervals in the range of minutes. Therefore, they might re-visit replenishing resources after several days, but may not base short-term decisions solely on the passing of time.

Technical intelligence and culture: Nut cracking in humans and chimpanzees

OBJECTIVES

According to the technical intelligence hypothesis, humans are superior to all other animal species in understanding and using tools. However, the vast majority of comparative studies between humans and chimpanzees, both proficient tool users, have not controlled for the effects of age, prior knowledge, past experience, rearing conditions, or differences in experimental procedures. We tested whether humans are superior to chimpanzees in selecting better tools, using them more dexteriously, achieving higher performance and gaining access to more resource as predicted under the technical intelligence hypothesis.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Aka and Mbendjele hunter-gatherers in the rainforest of Central African Republic and the Republic of Congo, respectively, and Taï chimpanzees in the rainforest of Côte d'Ivoire were observed cracking hard Panda oleosa nuts with different tools, as well as the soft Coula edulis and Elaeis guinensis nuts. The nut-cracking techniques, hammer material selection and two efficiency measures were compared.

RESULTS

As predicted, the Aka and the Mbendjele were able to exploit more species of hard nuts in the forest than chimpanzees. However, the chimpanzees were sometimes more efficient than the humans. Social roles differed between the two species, with the Aka and especially the Mbendjele exhibiting cooperation between nut-crackers whereas the chimpanzees were mainly individualistic.

DISCUSSION

Observations of nut-cracking by humans and chimpanzees only partially supported the technical intelligence hypothesis as higher degrees of flexibility in tool selection seen in chimpanzees compensated for use of less efficient tool material than in humans. Nut cracking was a stronger social undertaking in humans than in chimpanzees.

Too cool? Symbolic but not iconic stimuli impair 4-year-old children's performance on the delay-of-gratification choice paradigm

A common method of improving the performance of children and non-human primates on the delay-of-gratification maintenance paradigm and measures of executive function (e.g., the Less is More task) is to represent the rewards subjects can acquire symbolically. This method, known as symbolic distancing, is thought to lower activation of the "hot" impulsive system and allow the "cool" rational system to dominate processing. Surprisingly, in contrast to its impact on the measures noted above, recent developmental and comparative studies have reported that symbolic distancing has a null or negative impact on performance on the delay-of-gratification choice paradigm. Here, we add to this literature by demonstrating that 4-year-old children's performance on the choice paradigm is impaired when symbolic stimuli, but not iconic stimuli (i.e., pictures of the rewards), are used to represent rewards. These data add to a growing body of comparative work demonstrating task manipulations have a similar impact on children and non-human primates and also support other research suggesting different decision making processes may underlie performance on the delay-of-gratification choice and maintenance paradigms.

The power of associative learning and the ontogeny of optimal behaviour

Behaving efficiently (optimally or near-optimally) is central to animals' adaptation to their environment. Much evolutionary biology assumes, implicitly or explicitly, that optimal behavioural strategies are genetically inherited, yet the behaviour of many animals depends crucially on learning. The question of how learning contributes to optimal behaviour is largely open. Here we propose an associative learning model that can learn optimal behaviour in a wide variety of ecologically relevant circumstances. The model learns through chaining, a term introduced by Skinner to indicate learning of behaviour sequences by linking together shorter sequences or single behaviours. Our model formalizes the concept of conditioned reinforcement (the learning process that underlies chaining) and is closely related to optimization algorithms from machine learning. Our analysis dispels the common belief that associative learning is too limited to produce 'intelligent' behaviour such as tool use, social learning, self-control or expectations of the future. Furthermore, the model readily accounts for both instinctual and learned aspects of behaviour, clarifying how genetic evolution and individual learning complement each other, and bridging a long-standing divide between ethology and psychology. We conclude that associative learning, supported by genetic predispositions and including the oft-neglected phenomenon of conditioned reinforcement, may suffice to explain the ontogeny of optimal behaviour in most, if not all, non-human animals. Our results establish associative learning as a more powerful optimizing mechanism than acknowledged by current opinion.

Chimpanzees can point to smaller amounts of food to accumulate larger amounts but they still fail the reverse-reward contingency task

The reverse-reward contingency task presents 2 food sets to an animal, and they are required to choose the smaller of the 2 sets in order to receive the larger food set. Intriguingly, the majority of species tested on the reverse-reward task fail to learn this contingency in the absence of large trial counts, correction trials, and punishment techniques. The unique difficulty of this seemingly simple task likely reflects a failure of inhibitory control which is required to point toward a smaller and less desirable reward rather than a larger and more desirable reward. This failure by chimpanzees and other primates to pass the reverse-reward task is striking given the self-control they exhibit in a variety of other paradigms. For example, chimpanzees have consistently demonstrated a high capacity for delay of gratification in order to maximize accumulating food rewards in which foods are added item-by-item to a growing set until the subject consumes the rewards. To study the mechanisms underlying success in the accumulation task and failure in the reverse-reward task, we presented chimpanzees with several combinations of these 2 tasks to determine when chimpanzees might succeed in pointing to smaller food sets over larger food sets and how the nature of the task might determine the animals' success or failure. Across experiments, 3 chimpanzees repeatedly failed to solve the reverse-reward task, whereas they accumulated nearly all food items across all instances of the accumulation self-control task, even when they had to point to small amounts of food to accumulate larger amounts. These data indicate that constraints of these 2 related but still different tasks of behavioral inhibition are dependent upon the animals' perceptions of the choice set, their sense of control over the contents of choice sets, and the nature of the task constraints. (PsycINFO Database Record

Stuck in Time: Negative Income Shock Constricts the Temporal Window of Valuation Spanning the Future and the Past

Insufficient resources are associated with negative consequences including decreased valuation of future reinforcers. To determine if these effects result from scarcity, we examined the consequences of acute, abrupt changes in resource availability on delay discounting—the subjective devaluation of rewards as delay to receipt increases. In the current study, 599 individuals recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk read a narrative of a sudden change (positive, neutral, or negative) to one’s hypothetical future income and completed a delay discounting task examining future and past monetary gains and losses. The effects of the explicit zero procedure, a framing manipulation, was also examined. Negative income shock significantly increased discounting rates for gains and loses occurring both in the future and the past. Positive income windfalls significantly decreased discounting to a lesser extent. The framing procedure significantly reduced discounting under all conditions. Negative income shocks may result in short-term choices.

Ravens, New Caledonian crows and jackdaws parallel great apes in motor self-regulation despite smaller brains

Overriding motor impulses instigated by salient perceptual stimuli represent a fundamental inhibitory skill. Such motor self-regulation facilitates more rational behaviour, as it brings economy into the bodily interaction with the physical and social world. It also underlies certain complex cognitive processes including decision making. Recently, MacLean et al. (MacLean et al. 2014 Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 111, 2140-2148. (doi:10.1073/pnas.1323533111)) conducted a large-scale study involving 36 species, comparing motor self-regulation across taxa. They concluded that absolute brain size predicts level of performance. The great apes were most successful. Only a few of the species tested were birds. Given birds' small brain size-in absolute terms-yet flexible behaviour, their motor self-regulation calls for closer study. Corvids exhibit some of the largest relative avian brain sizes-although small in absolute measure-as well as the most flexible cognition in the animal kingdom. We therefore tested ravens, New Caledonian crows and jackdaws in the so-called cylinder task. We found performance indistinguishable from that of great apes despite the much smaller brains. We found both absolute and relative brain volume to be a reliable predictor of performance within Aves. The complex cognition of corvids is often likened to that of great apes; our results show further that they share similar fundamental cognitive mechanisms.

Pragmatic Prospection: How and Why People Think about the Future

In the present, the past is more knowable than the future—but people think far more about the future than the past. Both facts derive from the principle that the future can be changed whereas the past cannot. Our theory of pragmatic prospection holds that people think about the future so as to guide actions to bring about desirable outcomes. It proposes that thoughts about the future begin by imagining what one wants to happen, which is thus initially optimistic. A second stage of such prospective thinking maps out how to bring that about, and this stage is marked by consideration of obstacles, requisite steps, and other potential problems, and so it tends toward cautious realism and even pessimism. Pragmatic prospection presents a form of teleology, in which brains can anticipate possible future events and use those cognitions to guide behavior. Toward that end, it invokes meaning, consistent with evidence that thinking about the future is highly meaningful. Prospection often has narrative structure, involving a series of events in a temporal sequence linked together by meaning. Emotion is useful for evaluating different simulations of possible future events and plans. Prospection is socially learned and rests on socially constructed scaffolding for the future (e.g., future dates). Planning is perhaps the most common form of prospection, and it exemplifies all aspects of our theory (including pragmatic utility, meaning, teleological and narrative structure, and sociality). Bracing for bad news and defensive pessimism are strategies that inspire adaptive responses to feared outcomes.