Episodic-like memory in a gorilla: A review and new findings

Schwartz, Bennett L.; Hoffman, Megan L.; Evans, Siân

doi:10.1016/j.lmot.2005.02.012

Cited by 64 publications

(43 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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“…For example, Schwartz, Hoffman, and Evans (2005) have conducted studies with King, an adult male western lowland gorilla. The results of these studies showed that King's behavior reflected episodic-like memory properties, in that King could remember the order of past events (Experiment 1) and could remember where events occurred (Experiment 2).…”

Section: Temporal Knowledge In the Context Of Evolutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Temporal knowledge and autobiographical memory: an evolutionary perspective

Skowronski

Sedikides

2012

Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology

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Temporal Knowledge and Autobiographical Memory ---2 Temporal Knowledge and Autobiographical Memory: An Evolutionary PerspectiveOne characteristic of humans is that they have a sense of self. Exactly what does this mean? Examination of research and theory exploring the psychology of the self suggests that it has at least three important aspects.The first of these aspects is representation: The memory system contains mental structures that store and organize different kinds of self-relevant knowledge. Some of this knowledge is affective, reflecting the feelings that people have about themselves. Also, some of the knowledge is behavioral, reflecting mental procedures that contain memories of how to carry out various routines (e.g., riding a bicycle). This procedural information is often stored in non-verbal form. In addition, some of the knowledge reflects episodic memories of specific life events. These memories contain perceptual details of events, as well as information about event contexts (e.g., the time at which an event occurred).Furthermore, some of the knowledge is semantic, reflecting memories of self-judgments or the judgments that others have made of, and conveyed to, the self. These selfjudgments can be global (e.g., I am an uncoordinated person) or situationally constrained (e.g., I am good at cooking Indian food). These semantic representations can also contain memories of meta-cognitions (e.g., ideas about how others perceive one's behavior), information referring to dyadic relationships, information about one's position within a group, and information about intragroup dynamics and intergroup relations. Moreover, these semantic representations might contain information about how one compares to others or to the groups to which one belongs. Such information highlights those attributes that make one unique and distinct from attributes that characterize others (personal self), Temporal Knowledge and Autobiographical Memory ---3 those attributes that are shared with others with whom one has interpersonal relations (relational self), or those attributes that one shares with the groups to which one belongs (collective self ) (Sedikides & Brewer, 2001).The second attribute of the human self is that it maintains an executive function, regulating an individual's relation with the social and physical environment. Three classes of motives likely guide this capacity (Sedikides & Skowronski, 2000;Sedikides, Skowronski, & Gaertner, 2004): valuation (i.e., protecting and enhancing the self), learning (i.e., pursing a relatively accurate image of the self, improving skills and abilities), and homeostasis (i.e., seeking and endorsing information that is consistent with the self).The third attribute of the self is reflexivity. This term can be defined as the organism's ability to depict itself in its ongoing relation with other objects. Reflexivity is manifested in the interplay between the representational and executive capacities. For example, reflexivity allows the organism to alter long-term goals and render them...

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Section: Temporal Knowledge In the Context Of Evolutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Temporal knowledge and autobiographical memory: an evolutionary perspective

Skowronski

Sedikides

2012

Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology

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“…Behavioral experiments suggesting episodic-like memories in, for example, corvids and primates (e.g., Dickinson 1998, 1999;Schwartz et al 2005) are partly disputed, mainly because the studies are claimed to be inadequate in ruling out associative learning or species-speciWc behaviors (Suddendorf and Corballis 2007;Tulving 2005;Roberts 2002Roberts , 2006. The question about the related skill of episodic prospection in non-humans will be dealt with further.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) and orangutan (Pongo abelii) forethought: self-control and pre-experience in the face of future tool use

Osvath¹,

Osvath²

2008

Anim Cogn

309

253

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Planning for future needs has traditionally been considered to be restricted to human cognition. Although recent studies on great ape and corvid cognition challenge this belief, the phylogenesis of human planning remains largely unknown. The complex skill for future planning has not yet been satisfactorily established in any other extant primate species than our own. In humans, planning for future needs rely heavily on two overarching capacities, both of which lie at the heart of our cognition: self-control, often deWned as the suppression of immediate drives in favor of delayed rewards, and mental time travel, which could be described as a detached mental experience of a past or future event. Future planning is linked to additional high complexity cognition such as metacognition and a consciousness usually not attributed to animals. In a series of four experiments based on tool use, we demonstrate that chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and orangutans (Pongo abelii) override immediate drives in favor of future needs, and they do not merely rely on associative learning or semantic prospection when confronted with a planning task. These results suggest that great apes engage in planning for the future by out competing current drives and mentally pre-experiencing an upcoming event. This suggests that the advanced mental capacities utilized in human future planning are shared by phylogenetically more ancient species than previously believed.

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“…They were viewed as integrated memories for content ("what"), location ("where") and time ("when"), leaving aside the much-disputed role of a sense of subjective experience (e. g. resulting from autonoetic consciousness, Tulving 1983Tulving , 2005; mental time travel, Schwartz et al 2005; or autobiographical memory, Fivush 2011) as an additional, compulsory component. At the same time, a language-trained chimpanzee was reported to spontaneously recall the nature ("what") and locations ("where") of objects several hours or days after they had been hidden outside her cage, even though she witnessed the corresponding hiding event only once (Menzel 1999;.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This sparked a hefty controversy about the relation between animal and human episodic(-like) memory (e. g. Tulving 1983Tulving , 2005Suddendorf and Corballis 2007;Suddendorf and Busby 2003;Roberts and Feeney 2009;Raby and Clayton 2012 for reviews). Although the role of self-consciousness in human episodic memory still remains unclear to date, it was the "when" component that has been particularly questioned as a valid indicator of episodic-like memory in animal studies (Roberts 2002;Crystal 2010;Raby and Clayton 2012): it was suggested that animals can distinguish two events that occurred in the past with relatively simple cognitive mechanisms, for example based on relative familiarity (Crystal 2010) or memory trace strength estimation (e. g. Friedman 1993;Roberts 2002; but see Schwartz et al 2005 for an example of gorilla palinscopy). It was pointed out that these time estimation mechanisms can be performed in the present, but fail to reflect a "sense of pastness".…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wild chacma baboons (Papio ursinus) remember single foraging episodes

Noser

Byrne

2015

Anim Cogn

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Understanding animal episodic-like memory is important for tracing the evolution of the human mind. However, our knowledge about the existence and nature of episodic-like memory in nonhuman primates is minimal. We observed the behaviour of a wild male chacma baboon faced with a trade-off between protecting his stationary group from aggressive extra-group males and foraging among five out-of-sight platforms. These contained high-priority food at a time of natural food shortage. In 10 morning and 8 evening trials, the male spontaneously visited the platforms in 5 and 4 different sequences, respectively. In addition, he interrupted foraging sequences at virtually any point on eight occasions, returning to the group for up to 2 hours. He then visited some or all of the remaining platforms and prevented re-visits to already depleted ones, apparently based on his memory for the previous foraging episode about food value, location and time. Efficient use of memory allowed him to keep minimal time absent from his group while keeping food intake high. These findings support the idea that episodic-like memory offers an allpurpose solution to a wide variety of problems that require flexible, quick, yet precise decisions in situations arising from competition for food and mates in wild primates.

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Episodic-like memory in a gorilla: A review and new findings

Cited by 64 publications

References 62 publications

Temporal knowledge and autobiographical memory: an evolutionary perspective

Temporal knowledge and autobiographical memory: an evolutionary perspective

Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) and orangutan (Pongo abelii) forethought: self-control and pre-experience in the face of future tool use

Wild chacma baboons (Papio ursinus) remember single foraging episodes

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