Abstract:Objective: The provision of information appears to be an important feature of humor. The present studies examined whether humor serves as an interpersonal signal such that an individual"s style of humor is associated with how the individual is perceived by others. Method: We examined this issue across two studies. In Study 1, undergraduate participants (257 targets) were rated more positively by their friends and family members (1194 perceivers) when they possessed more benign humor styles. In Study 2, 1190 community participants rated the romantic desirability of targets ostensibly possessing different humor styles. Results: Across both studies, our results were consistent with the possibility that humor serves as a signal. More specifically, individuals with benign humor styles (affiliative and self-enhancing humor styles) were evaluated more positively than those targets with injurious humor styles (aggressive and self-defeating humor styles). Conclusion: These findings are discussed in terms of the role that humor may play in interpersonal perception and relationships.

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Two adult chimpanzees were presented with a series of natural category discrimination tasks on a touch screen computer, in which the discriminations varied in degree of abstraction. At the concrete level, discriminations could be made on the basis of single perceptual features, but at the more abstract level, categories were more inclusive, containing exemplars with variant perceptual features. For instance, at the most abstract level, the chimpanzees were required to select images of animals rather than nonanimals, and exemplars within both categories were perceptually diverse. One chimpanzee showed positive transfer at each level of abstraction but required more sessions to reach criterion as the discriminations became more abstract. The other chimpanzee failed to demonstrate consistent significant acquisition of a concept. The results indicate that unlike other apes and black bears, tested previously, chimpanzees found the most abstract discriminations the most difficult to acquire. Analyses of the features of pictures that yielded high or low accuracy revealed no significant differences on several key features, suggesting that the presence of facial features, eyes, or specific coloration did not control responding. In addition, the chimpanzees performed more accurately with photos judged as less typical exemplars of the category by human raters. However, responses to pictures of particular species suggest that chimpanzees may rely on perceptual similarity to familiar exemplars when acquiring experimenter-defined natural categories.Keywords Chimpanzees . Concept formation . Levels of abstraction . Natural categoriesThe formation of natural categories is critical to survival for species faced with challenges such as distinguishing food items from nonpalatable objects and prey from predators. Given the fundamental importance of natural concepts in determining the appropriate response to novel objects, it is expected that most animal species would form natural categories, despite their notoriously fuzzy boundaries (Malt, 1993;McCloskey & Glucksberg, 1978). Natural categories may be inferred from perceptual and functional attributes that are necessary, sufficient, and perhaps prototypical for a member of that category. A deep literature grounded in cognitive, comparative, and developmental psychology has established that categories vary to the extent that they are tied to singular perceptual features or abstracted from patterns of features, functions, and attributes (Fize, Cauchoix, & Fabre-Thorpe, 2011;Gelman & Medin, 1993;Herrnstein, 1990;Mervis & Rosch, 1981;Roberts & Mazmanian, 1988; Rosch, Mervis, Gray, Johnson, & Boyes-Braem, 1976;Vonk & MacDonald, 2002, 2004Vonk & Povinelli, 2012; Zentall, Wasserman, Lazareva, Thompson, & Ratterman, 2008). To the extent that categories vary in inclusiveness, they will vary in the degree of abstraction that is required to identify category membership. For instance, a concrete-level category may include members of only a particular species, whose physical features...

Egan, Santos, and Bloom (2007). In experimental trials, subjects were given choices between 2 equally preferred food items and then presented with the unchosen option and a novel, equally preferred food item. In control trials, subjects were presented with 1 accessible and 1 inaccessible option from another triad of equally preferred food items. They were then presented with the previously inaccessible item and a novel member of that triad. Subjects, as a whole, did not prefer the novel item in experimental or control trials. However, there was a tendency toward a subject by condition interaction. When analyzed by primate versus nonprimate categories, only primates preferred the novel item in experimental but not control trials, indicating that they resolved cognitive dissonance by devaluing the unchosen option only when an option was derogated by their own free choice. This finding suggests that this phenomenon might exist within but not outside of the primate order.

Children (predominantly white and middle class) between 3 and 6 years (M = 55.12 months, N = 145 at Time 1, N = 102 at Time 2) participated in the prosocial choice test at two time points approximately 10 months apart. Children could share with strangers, close friends, nonfriends, and in a control, no recipient condition. Children shared more rewards with friends over time. Age interacted with recipient type such that older children had a higher probability of prosocial allocations toward friends and strangers compared to younger children. Theory of mind (ToM) predicted more prosocial allocations to friends over time, and the youngest children with higher ToM scores showed the largest increase in sharing with friends over time.

-We presented two American black bears (Ursus americanus) with a serial list learning memory task, and one of the bears with a matching-to-sample task. After extended training, both bears demonstrated some success with the memory task but failed to generalize the overarching rule of the task to novel stimuli. Matching to sample proved even more difficult for our bear to learn. We conclude that, despite previous success in training bears to respond to natural categories, quantity discriminations, and other related tasks, that bears may possess a cognitive limitation with regards to learning abstract rules. Future tests using different procedures are necessary to determine whether this is a limit of bears' cognitive capacities, or a limitation of the current tasks as presented. Future tests should present a larger number of varying stimuli. Ideally, bears of various species should be tested on these tasks to demonstrate species as well as individual differences.Keywords -Bear, Serial list memory, Matching-to-sample, Conceptual, Cognition Many animals are able to categorize objects and events in their surroundings and can demonstrate this ability in experimental tests. Carnivores are no exception, demonstrating skill in categorization tasks ranging from simple quantity and shape discriminations to more abstract abilities, such as oddity learning (for a recent review see Vonk & Leete, 2017). However, as summarized by Vonk and Leete, members of the order Carnivora have rarely been tested for more complex cognitive abilities. Most of the tasks, with the possible exception of those presented to canines, have involved discriminations where animals can attend to observable perceptual cues associated with reinforcement (or the lack thereof). Carnivores are of interest, because, unlike most species assessed for sophisticated cognitive abilities, they exhibit variability in their social structure and in their foraging strategies. Bears and felines are relatively asocial (with the exception of lions, Panthera leo) in that they do not live in stable groups beyond the mother-cub relationship in the first one-two years of life. Further, they show diversity in diet that might predict different levels of cognitive skill across species (Byrne, 1997;Vonk, 2016). This is particularly true of bears, which range from obligate carnivores to obligate herbivores, with some bears, such as black bears, exhibiting a generalist diet (Gittleman, 1986).Bears, in particular, have only recently been tested on an extensive range of cognitive tests, and the bulk of the research has been done with

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