Journal of Comparative Psychology最新文献

In this essay, the author explores the question of why distractions sometimes aid self-control. In a study with chimpanzees, Evans and Beran (2007) used two conditions with toys to address the possibility raised by Mueller et al. (2023) about toys as distractors. In the first, the accumulating rewards were within reach, and so chimpanzees had to inhibit taking rewards if more were to accumulate. The second condition was essential to this issue, as in that case toys also were available, but the delayed reward was out of reach (i.e., the chimpanzees were forced to wait to get the delayed reward). Because these trial types were intermixed, an explanation of the toys' effectiveness through conditioned association with the delayed reward would predict that the chimpanzees should have engaged the toys equally often in both conditions. However, three of four chimpanzees engaged the toys more when the accumulating reward was within reach compared to when it was not. Evans and Beran suggested that engagement with distractors in that study occurred when it was functionally effective in aiding delayed gratification, not solely as a result of toys being associated with delayed rewards, and thus was a cognitively controlled decision by the chimpanzees. The results of Evans and Beran (2007) have yet to be replicated in any other primate species. But, Mueller et al. (2023) noted that a study with a parrot (Koepke et al., 2015) showed that the parrot would use distractors and even move the smaller, sooner reward away from itself, perhaps matching the self-distraction techniques of children who hide their faces or talk to themselves. Thus, it remains to be determined whether those behaviors also can be explained by learned associations with reward or whether they reflect attention-based explanations. Mueller et al. (2023) have provided a creative experiment and a compelling argument that more careful analysis is needed of exactly what happens when an animal (or child) engages distractors and shows improved self-control, so that we can understand what role past reinforcement history may play and what possible attentional strategies or other cognitive strategies are at work in different self-control tasks. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

In a successive delay-discounting task, a small reward can be obtained immediately but a larger reward can be obtained if one waits. There is evidence that the larger reward can be obtained more easily if one is "distracted" from obtaining the small reward. It is proposed here that a distractor stimulus may function as a Pavlovian conditioned stimulus (sign tracking) because orienting to it may be directly associated with the larger reinforcer. In the present study with pigeons, we examined two successive procedures: (a) a peck to a red light resulted in one pellet of food, and waiting for the red light to turn off resulted in five pellets (Red-Only). (b) If the pigeon pecked a red light, it received one pellet of food, and if it waited for the red light to turn to green, a peck to the green light resulted in five pellets of food (Red-Green). For both groups, on some trials, a concurrent (distractor) stimulus appeared with the red light but responses to it had no programed consequence. Results indicated that the pigeons in both groups waited for the larger reward more often when the distractor was present than when it was absent and that pigeons in the Red-Only group waited longer than those in the Red-Green group. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that the concurrent stimulus served as a conditioned stimulus for the Red-Only group and as a higher order conditioned stimulus for the Red-Green group. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Many animals respond to and use social cues emitted by other species (e.g., head direction). In the context of human-animal communication, these capacities have been attributed to regular and longstanding exposure to humans. We presented wild brown skuas (Catharacta antarctica ssp. lonnbergi) with two versions of an object-choice paradigm. In the cooperative version (Experiment 1), one human experimenter provided a simple and salient cue indicating which of two containers covered a food reward. The cues administered consisted of touching, looking at, pointing at, or pointing and looking at the container hiding food. In Experiment 1, skuas could thus cooperate with an experimenter by using the cues provided to locate the rewarded container. In the competitive version (Experiment 2), two human experimenters presented a platform with a visible food reward. In six experimental conditions, we varied experimenters' body orientation, head orientation, eye-gaze direction, face occlusion, and mouth occlusion, as well as the platform's location, ensuring that in each case only one experimenter had visual access to the rewarded platform. Here, birds could compete with the experimenters by robbing the human who does not see the food. Skuas failed to use human-given cues spontaneously in Experiment 1, and took the reward regardless of whether the experimenters could see in Experiment 2. Our results contrast with those obtained on other wild birds with pre-experience with humans. Hopefully, our findings will stimulate further research in order to illuminate the potential role of such experience in the capacity to respond to and use human-given cues. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Chunking is an important cognitive process allowing the compression of information in short-term memory. The aim of this study is to compare the dynamics of chunking during the learning of a visuomotor sequence in humans (Homo sapiens) and Guinea baboons (Papio papio). We duplicated in humans an experimental paradigm that has been used previously in baboons. On each trial, human participants had to point to a moving target on a touch screen. The experiment involved the repetition of the same sequence of nine items over a 1,000 trials. To reproduce as much as possible the conditions under which baboons performed the task, human participants were tested at their own pace. Results revealed that baboons and humans shared similar chunking dynamics: In both species, the sequence was initially parsed into small chunks that became longer and fewer with practice through two reorganization mechanisms (recombinations and concatenations). Differences were also observed regarding the global decrease in response times that was faster and more pronounced in humans compared with baboons. Analyses of these similarities and differences provide new empirical evidence for understanding the general properties of chunking mechanisms in sequence learning and its evolution across species. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Humans anthropomorphize: as a result of our evolved ultrasociality, we see the world through person-colored glasses. In this review, I suggest that an interesting proportion of the extraordinary tool-using abilities shown by humans results from our mistakenly anthropomorphizing and forming social relationships with objects and devices. I introduce the term machination to describe this error, sketch an outline of the evidence for it, tie it to intrinsic reward for social interaction, and use it to help explain overimitation-itself posited as underpinning human technological complexity-by human children and adults. I also suggest pathways for testing the concept's presence and limits, with an explicit focus on context-specific individual and temporal variation. I posit cognitive pressure from time constraints or opaque mechanisms as a cause for machination, with rapid, subconscious attribution of goals or desires to tools reducing cognitive overload. Machination holds promise for understanding how we create and use combinatorial technology, for clarifying differences with nonhuman animal tool use, and for examining the human fascination with objects. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Individuals in social groups can gain benefits from being in those groups, including an increased ability to find food and avoid predators. We tested for potential group benefits in shelter choice in the Argentinian wood roach, Blaptica dubia. Roaches were tested in arenas with two shelters available in which one shelter was significantly darker than the other. Female and male roaches, housed separately, were tested as solitary individuals, or in same-sex groups of 5, 10, or 15. The roaches were tested under two light regimes (lights on vs. lights off) and two shelter distances (shelters near vs. shelters far) to provide variation in shelter search conditions. Solitary individuals chose the darker shelter at chance levels, but the roaches in groups chose the darker shelter significantly more often than chance. Furthermore, the two largest groups chose the darker shelter more often than the group of five roaches. We detected effects related to light variation that indicated roaches were more likely to be under either shelter in the lights-on conditions, and more likely to be out in the arena and under no shelter in the lights-off condition. Shelter distances had negligible effects on shelter choice and sex had no effect. Taken together, our results indicate individuals can make more optimal choices regarding shelter darkness if they are in a group, and that decision-making related to shelter is sensitive to variation in social context. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The cap-pushing response (CPR) is a new free-flying technique used to study learning and memory in honey bees. Bees fly to a target where they push a cap to reveal a hidden food source. When combined with traditional odor and color targets, the CPR technique opens the door to additional choice preference tests in honey bees. To facilitate the use of the CPR technique, three experiments were conducted. Experiment 1 investigates the impact of extended training on the CPR response and its role in extinction. Experiment 2 explores the role of CPR in overshadowing, and Experiment 3 explores the effects of electric shock punishment on the CPR technique. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).