Delay choice versus delay maintenance: Different measures of delayed gratification in capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella).

Addessi, Elsa; Paglieri, Fabio; Beran, Michael J.; Evans, Theodore A.; Macchitella, Luigi; Petrillo, Francesca De; Focaroli, Valentina

doi:10.1037/a0031869

Cited by 81 publications

(86 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…Thus, species differences in information processing may underlie some of the species differences observed in intertemporal choices. Finally, studies testing the same individuals in both the delay choice task used here and a related 'delay maintenance' task showed limited evidence for a correlation between the two tasks, suggesting that they may not measure the same construct [60]. Therefore, validating the findings presented here requires using converging evidence by testing multiple methods across species.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Evolutionary pressures on primate intertemporal choice

Stevens

2014

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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From finding food to choosing mates, animals must make intertemporal choices that involve fitness benefits available at different times. Species vary dramatically in their willingness to wait for delayed rewards. Why does this variation across species exist? An adaptive approach to intertemporal choice suggests that time preferences should reflect the temporal problems faced in a species's environment. Here, I use phylogenetic regression to test whether allometric factors relating to body size, relative brain size and social group size predict how long 13 primate species will wait in laboratory intertemporal choice tasks. Controlling for phylogeny, a composite allometric factor that includes body mass, absolute brain size, lifespan and home range size predicted waiting times, but relative brain size and social group size did not. These findings support the notion that selective pressures have sculpted intertemporal choices to solve adaptive problems faced by animals. Collecting these types of data across a large number of species can provide key insights into the evolution of decision making and cognition.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Evolutionary pressures on primate intertemporal choice

Stevens

2014

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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“…Like capuchins, choices in these two tasks do not correlate within pinyon jays. Addessi et al (2013) suggest that these two tasks tap different components of self-control. They argue that delay maintenance tasks involve rather low-level behavioral inhibition, whereas delay choice tasks involve "higher order processing" of delay length and reward magnitude.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Intertemporal choices across different tasks have yielded mixed results. For example, different populations of the same species of capuchin monkey varied in whether their responses in a delay choice task and accumulation task correlated (Addessi et al, 2013). The pinyon jay tasks are similar to the capuchin tasks: Both involve a delay choice task, and the capuchins' accumulation task is a type of delay maintenance task in which the subject must sustain a choice for a delayed reward during the delay.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The domain specificity of intertemporal choice in pinyon jays

et al. 2015

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When choosing between a piece of cake now versus a slimmer waistline in the future, many of us have difficulty with self-control. Food-caching species, however, regularly hide food for later recovery, sometimes waiting months before retrieving their caches. It remains unclear whether these long-term choices generalize outside of the caching domain. We hypothesized that the ability to save for the future is a general tendency that cuts across different situations. To test this hypothesis, we measured and experimentally manipulated caching to evaluate its relationship with operant measures of selfcontrol in pinyon jays (Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus). We found no correlation between caching and self-control at the individual level, and experimentally increasing caching did not influence self-control. The self-control required for caching food, therefore, does not carry over to other foraging tasks, suggesting that it is domain specific in pinyon jays.

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“…Monkeys show more variable performances on accumulation tasks and other delay of gratification tasks (e.g., Addessi et al, 2013;Anderson, Kuroshima, & Fujita, 2010;Evans & Beran, 2007b;Evans, Beran, Paglieri, & Addessi, 2012;Pelé, Micheletta, Uhlrich, Thierry, & Dufour, 2011). Showing self-control through delay of gratification also can be incredibly difficult for humans, with failures in the form of overeating, smoking, drug use, and inadequate financial savings all leading to highly negative future outcomes.…”

Section: Dealing With Fallibility: Strategic Delay Of Gratificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

To Err Is (Not Only) Human: Fallibility as a Window Into Primate Cognition

Beran¹

2017

CCBR

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Human cognition affords our species an excellent toolbox for solving problems. Many nonhuman animal species appear to share with humans some of these tools. However, human cognition also is fallible. Susceptibility to perceptual illusions, misrepresentation of probabilities, cognitive biases, faulty memory, and heuristics all present sources of error from which behavior is suboptimal in the pursuit of goals. Some nonhuman species share these perceptual and cognitive biases with humans. Examples of this are described for nonhuman primates, ranging from perceptual illusions to humanlike failures on games of probability such as the Monty Hall Problem. Sometimes the performances of nonhuman primates mirror those of humans, but there are exceptions. Given that other species do experience things erroneously and make errors in judgment, it is an exciting question of whether they also might generate any strategies to offset their fallibility. Two examples to suggest that they do are provided from research with chimpanzees. One is of strategic self-distraction in the face of tempting rewards in a delay of gratification task. The other is of information-seeking behaviors in different contexts where chimpanzees have different types of information. This research, and that of many other groups, shows the value of examining perceptual and cognitive errors across species, and how different individuals and different species may be equipped psychologically to deal with the possibility of these errors occurring. Keywords: primate cognition, perception, illusions, self-control, metacognition IntroductionThe 20th century saw a shift in how humans thought about nonhuman animals (hereafter, animals), their behavior, and the cognitive processes that might underlie their behavior. Comparative cognition emerged as a strong discipline in the second half of the century, largely as a result of the broader cognitive revolution in human psychology, continued developments in ethology, and new opportunities to study a diverse range of species (Shettleworth, 2010). Earlier comparative psychologists certainly took an interest in aspects of cognition (see Dewsbury, 1984Dewsbury, , 2000Dewsbury, , 2013, but researchers in the second half of the century provided new approaches to understanding animal minds. Initially these approaches focused largely on traditional aspects of human cognitive psychology, including memory, perceptual capacities, and learning phenomenon (e.g., Honig & Fetterman, 1992;Hulse, Fowler, & Honig, 1978;Roitblat, Bever, & Terrace, 1984), as they might reflect the use of mental representations and other information-processing approaches for interacting with the world. Later, 58COMPARATIVE COGNITION & BEHAVIOR REVIEWS Beran research increasingly focused on questions that covered nearly every topic found in a human cognitive psychology textbook, and even questions that were not typically discussed in such sources (e.g., theory of mind, deception, mind reading, cooperative decision making, metacognition, mental time travel, and ot...

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Delay choice versus delay maintenance: Different measures of delayed gratification in capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella).

Cited by 81 publications

References 36 publications

Evolutionary pressures on primate intertemporal choice

Evolutionary pressures on primate intertemporal choice

The domain specificity of intertemporal choice in pinyon jays

To Err Is (Not Only) Human: Fallibility as a Window Into Primate Cognition

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