Can domestic fowl, Gallus gallus domesticus, show self-control?

Abeyesinghe, Siobhan; Nicol, CJ; Hartnell, SJ; Wathes, C. M.

doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2004.10.011

Cited by 76 publications

(44 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…Psychologists have found high levels of discounting (suggesting impulsivity) in rats, several species of monkey, lemurs, nonhuman apes, jays, chickens, bumblebees, and other animals (e.g., Abeyesinghe, Nicol, Hartnell, & Wathes, 2005;Ainslie, 1974;Bateson & Kacelnik, 1996;Cheng, Peña, Porter, & Irwin, 2002;McDiarmid & Fig. 1 (A) Schematic of the structure of the standard intertemporal choice task. On each trial, the subject chooses between a smaller sooner (SS) and a larger later (LL) option.…”

Section: The Intertemporal Choice Taskmentioning

confidence: 99%

Time discounting and time preference in animals: A critical review

2015

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Animals are an important model for studies of impulsivity and self-control. Many studies have made use of the intertemporal choice task, which pits small rewards available sooner against larger rewards available later (typically several seconds), repeated over many trials. Preference for the sooner reward is often taken to indicate impulsivity and/or a failure of self-control. This review shows that very little evidence supports this assumption; on the contrary, ostensible discounting behavior may reflect a boundedly rational but not necessarily impulsive reward-maximizing strategy. Specifically, animals may discount weakly, or even adopt a long-term rate-maximizing strategy, but fail to fully incorporate postreward delays into their choices. This failure may reflect learning biases. Consequently, tasks that measure animal discounting may greatly overestimate the true discounting and may be confounded by processes unrelated to time preferences. If so, animals may be much more patient than is widely believed; human and animal intertemporal choices may reflect unrelated mental operations; and the shared hyperbolic shape of the human and animal discount curves, which is used to justify cross-species comparisons, may be coincidental. The discussion concludes with a consideration of alternative ways to measure self-control in animals.

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Section: The Intertemporal Choice Taskmentioning

confidence: 99%

Time discounting and time preference in animals: A critical review

2015

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“…Animals vary in their ability to do so. While many animals prefer immediacy of reward (Abeyesinghe et al, 2005;Mazur, 1987;Richards et al, 1997), several of the primate species are able to delay gratification for very long periods of time. Many of the species we discuss can do so, including chimpanzees, capuchins, and rhesus and long-tailed macaques (Beran & Evans, 2006;Dufour et al, 2007;Evans & Westergaard, 2006;Evans & Beran, 2007a, 2007bSzalda-Petree et al, 2004;Tobin et al, 1996).…”

Section: Delay Of Gratificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

To Each According to his Need? Variability in the Responses to Inequity in Non-Human Primates

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Brosnan

2012

Soc Just Res

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While it is well established that humans respond to inequity, it remains unclear the extent to which this behavior occurs in our nonhuman primate relatives. By comparing a variety of species, spanning from New World and Old World monkeys to great apes, scientists can begin to answer questions about how the response to inequity evolved, what the function of this response is, and why and how different contexts shape it. In particular, research across nonhuman primate species suggests that the response is quite variable across species, contexts and individuals. In this paper, we aim to review these differences in an attempt to identify and better understand the patterns that emerge from the existing data with the goal of developing directions for future research. To begin, we address the importance of considering socio-ecological factors in nonhuman primates in order to better understand and predict expected patterns of cooperation and aversion to inequity in different species, following which we provide a detailed analysis of the patterns uncovered by these comparisons. Ultimately, we use this synthesis to propose new ideas for research to better understand this response and, hence, the evolution of our own responses to inequity. what the function of this response is, and why and how different contexts shape it. Specifically, it can help clarify whether the response represents a homology, meaning it shares a common evolutionary origin, or whether it converged in several species due to similar selective pressures, absent shared descent.Several theories have been put forth to help explain negative reactions to inequity. For instance, it may be that a negative response to inequity evolved within a social context in order to recognize and avoid future inequity. This process may have occurred through steps that each increased fitness for individuals (Brosnan, 2006). First, individuals may recognize that another individual obtains rewards that are different from one's own, and then feel strongly enough to react to this discrepancy, which, if it caused the individual to sample the environment and explore other potential partners, could lead to increased fitness. Ultimately, this may lead to responses such as sacrificing a positive (but lower value) reward in order to restore equity or to punish the other individual, something humans are known to do (see Raihani & McAuliffe, 2012, this issue). Alternately, inequity may have evolved from non-social, more generalized reward mechanisms that exist in multiple contexts, such as loss aversion (Chen & Santos, 2006; Raihani & McAuliffe, 2012, this issue). In this case, individuals form expectations about rewards within different contexts, and compare these rewards to the initial expectation rather than a social reference point. Consequently, a negative response occurs when these expectations are violated in a way that does not benefit the individual.But whether or not the origins are social, what is the benefit of this response? One hypothesis is that this negative resp...

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“…Indeed, rodents and most birds tested wait only few seconds for a delayed gain, and many monkeys wait less than a minute [2][3][4][5][6][7]. Some primates and dogs (possibly as an effect of domestication) do, however, accept delays over a minute and even show outstanding plasticity in decision-making relative to the benefits involved [8][9][10][11].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Goffin cockatoos wait for qualitative and quantitative gains but prefer ‘better’ to ‘more’

2013

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Evidence for flexible impulse control over food consumption is rare in nonhuman animals. So far, only primates and corvids have been shown to be able to fully inhibit the consumption of a desirable food item in anticipation for a gain in quality or quantity longer than a minute. We tested Goffin cockatoos (Cacatua goffini) in an exchange task. Subjects were able to bridge delays of up to 80 s for a preferred food quality and up to 20 s for a higher quantity, providing the first evidence for temporal discounting in birds that do not cache food.

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Can domestic fowl, Gallus gallus domesticus, show self-control?

Cited by 76 publications

References 46 publications

Time discounting and time preference in animals: A critical review

Time discounting and time preference in animals: A critical review

To Each According to his Need? Variability in the Responses to Inequity in Non-Human Primates

Goffin cockatoos wait for qualitative and quantitative gains but prefer ‘better’ to ‘more’

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