Disentangling Great Apes' Decoy-Effect Bias in a Food Choice Task

Sánchez-Amaro, Alejandro; Altınok, Nazlı; Heintz, Christophe; Call, Josep

doi:10.26451/abc.06.03.05.2019

Cited by 10 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…For instance, an agent may remember that two actions result each on a typical amount of and kind of food, and if forced to choose, compares the predicted consequences of the two actions in terms of two dimensions, amount and palatability, to rank them. This framework is often invoked to argue that some violations of economic rationality occur because different dimensions are given different weights when constructing preference at the time of choice (for examples, see Bateson et al 2003 ; Nachev et al 2021 ; Sánchez-Amaro et al 2019 ).…”

Section: On the Concept Of Utilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Testing cognitive models of decision-making: selected studies with starlings

2022

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The behavioural sciences are home to controversies that have survived for centuries, notably about the relation between observable behaviour and theoretical constructs addressing out-of-sight processes in the agents’ brains. There is no shared definition for cognition, but the very existence of a thriving journal called Animal Cognition proves that such controversies are still live and help to (a) promote research on the complexity of processes leading to action, and (b) nudge scholars to restrict their cognitive models to those that can be falsified experimentally. Here, we illustrate some of these issues in a limited arena, focusing on the construction and expression of subjective value and choice. Using mainly work from our own laboratory, we show that valuation of alternatives is sensitive to options’ properties, to subject’s state, and to background alternatives. These factors exert their influence at the time the subject learns about individual options, rather than at choice time. We also show that valuation can be experimentally dissociated from the cognitive representation of options’ metrics and argue that experimental animals process options independently at the time of choice, without elaborated comparisons along different dimensions. The findings we report are not consistent with the hypothesis that preference is constructed at the time of choice, a prevalent view in human decision-making research. We argue that animal cognition, viewed as a research program at the crossroads of different behavioural sciences rather than as a debate about properties of mental life, is inspiring and solid, and a progressive and progressing paradigm.

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Section: On the Concept Of Utilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Testing cognitive models of decision-making: selected studies with starlings

2022

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“…Experimental research investigating the influence of how choices are framed can help elucidate primates' risk aversion and decision-making strategies (Lakshminarayanan et al, 2011;Proctor et al, 2014). Even when relatively complete information is provided, individuals' choices may be affected by the presence of a "decoy," or distractor element that pulls a subject's attention away from the target (and potentially better) options (e.g., Sanchez-Amaro et al, 2019).…”

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confidence: 99%

Primates' Food Preferences Predict Their Food Choices Even Under Uncertain Conditions

Huskisson¹,

Egelkamp²,

Jacobson³

et al. 2021

AB&C

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Primates’ food preferences are typically assessed under conditions of certainty. To increase ecological validity, and to explore primates’ decision making from a comparative perspective, we tested three primate species (Pan troglodytes, Gorilla gorilla gorilla, Macaca fuscata) (N = 18) in two food-preference tests that created different conditions of uncertainty. In the first, we showed subjects pairs of photographs of six foods in a randomized manner within each session, so subjects could not predict the next pairing and had to respond in accordance with their preferences. We found individual differences in subjects’ preference and differences in six subjects’ preferences when comparing their selections in this test to selections made when trials were blocked by food pairing (tested previously: Huskisson et al., 2020). In in each trial of the second test we paired the food stimuli with a ‘chance’ symbol, representing a random reward of one of the six foods. Across species, each subject’s propensity to select chance over the known food varied by food type: when the known option was highly preferred, subjects were less likely to select the chance symbol. Additionally, 61.11% of the subjects’ rates of selecting foods in the first test showed a positive trend with the rates of selecting the same foods under conditions of uncertainty here; three of these subjects’ selection rates were significantly correlated between tests. Finally, if the food chimpanzees received for selecting the chance symbol was a preferred food, they were more likely to select chance again in the subsequent trial.

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“…But in primates, the only study 95 that has found a decoy effect used a perceptual discrimination task [25], 96 but the same monkeys do not show the effect when choosing among tasks 97 that vary in effort required [26]. Further, two studies using food choice 98 tasks, which are arguably most similar to the foraging experiments used 99 with bees and grey jays, found no evidence of this bias [19,27]. One 100 possibility for these results is that the primates' preferences between the 101 initial options were too strong for the decoys to change their behavioural 102 choices, even though they might have changed the perceived value of the 103 options.…”

Section: Introduction 64mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…in part, explain why previous studies using food preference paradigms 246 with primates [19,27] have found mixed results, because they used the 247 same food items and quantities for each individual. In this study, we 248 carefully calibrated monkeys' initial preferences 1) by changing the food 249 items and sizes and 2) by using a countable food item that does not easily 250 substitute for fruit and vegetable pieces.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Capuchin monkeys (Sapajus [Cebus] apella) are more susceptible to contrast than to decoy and social context effects

Watzek¹,

Brosnan²

2020

Preprint

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42Theories of optimal decision-making typically assume that animals have 43 consistent preferences among options. In reality, economic behaviour in 44 humans and foraging behaviour in some animals is often susceptible to 45 choice-irrelevant factors such as inferior options or conspecifics' 46 outcomes, but the evidence for primate decision-making is mixed. Unlike 47 previous experiments, we assessed the relative magnitude of three context 48 effects. Using a food preference paradigm, we varied the number of cereal 49 pieces to determine how much a piece of food A was "worth" (50% 50 choice) to each of 13 capuchins. We predicted that monkeys would 51 devalue A in the contrast condition (when a higher-quality but 52 unattainable food was present) and overvalue it in the decoy condition 53(when a smaller version of A was a third option) and social condition 54(when A, if unchosen, was given to a partner). Capuchins were 4 times 55 less likely to choose A in the contrast condition, but 2 to 3 times more 56 likely to choose it in the decoy and social conditions. When carefully 57 accounting for initial preferences, we found that these primates, like 58 humans, are sensitive to context effects. This suggests that these biases are 59 evolved and impacts how we think about them in humans. 60 Keywords: decision-making bias, context dependence, decoy effect, 61 contrast effect, capuchin monkey, Sapajus [Cebus] apella 62 63

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Disentangling Great Apes' Decoy-Effect Bias in a Food Choice Task

Cited by 10 publications

References 35 publications

Testing cognitive models of decision-making: selected studies with starlings

Testing cognitive models of decision-making: selected studies with starlings

Primates' Food Preferences Predict Their Food Choices Even Under Uncertain Conditions

Capuchin monkeys (Sapajus [Cebus] apella) are more susceptible to contrast than to decoy and social context effects

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