Corvid caching: Insights from a cognitive model.

Vaart, Elske van der; Verbrugge, Rineke; Hemelrijk, Charlotte K.

doi:10.1037/a0022988

Cited by 13 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 46 publications

(98 reference statements)

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“…This safety risk depends on its previous recovery experiences with site k 's tray, but only on those recovery experiences directed at its actual cache sites or their neighbors. This is in line with our previous work [21], where we show that scrub jays probably do not learn from all their recovery attempts, but only from those that are directed at sites where they have cached.…”

Section: Methodssupporting

confidence: 93%

“…We do this by taking our existing computational model of corvid cognition, as we have already shown that it generates caching behavior that resembles that of real corvids [21]. In the present paper, we extend this model with a single behavioral rule assumed to be previously learned – a preference for caching far away from conspecifics – and a new set of assumptions related to stress .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

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Corvid Re-Caching without ‘Theory of Mind’: A Model

2012

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Scrub jays are thought to use many tactics to protect their caches. For instance, they predominantly bury food far away from conspecifics, and if they must cache while being watched, they often re-cache their worms later, once they are in private. Two explanations have been offered for such observations, and they are intensely debated. First, the birds may reason about their competitors' mental states, with a ‘theory of mind’; alternatively, they may apply behavioral rules learned in daily life. Although this second hypothesis is cognitively simpler, it does seem to require a different, ad-hoc behavioral rule for every caching and re-caching pattern exhibited by the birds. Our new theory avoids this drawback by explaining a large variety of patterns as side-effects of stress and the resulting memory errors. Inspired by experimental data, we assume that re-caching is not motivated by a deliberate effort to safeguard specific caches from theft, but by a general desire to cache more. This desire is brought on by stress, which is determined by the presence and dominance of onlookers, and by unsuccessful recovery attempts. We study this theory in two experiments similar to those done with real birds with a kind of ‘virtual bird’, whose behavior depends on a set of basic assumptions about corvid cognition, and a well-established model of human memory. Our results show that the ‘virtual bird’ acts as the real birds did; its re-caching reflects whether it has been watched, how dominant its onlooker was, and how close to that onlooker it has cached. This happens even though it cannot attribute mental states, and it has only a single behavioral rule assumed to be previously learned. Thus, our simulations indicate that corvid re-caching can be explained without sophisticated social cognition. Given our specific predictions, our theory can easily be tested empirically.

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Section: Methodssupporting

confidence: 93%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Corvid Re-Caching without ‘Theory of Mind’: A Model

2012

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“…Though van der Vaart et al . [37] used the insights of rational analysis to model animal memory, few have used the steps of rational analysis (figure 1) to better understand cognition (but see [43]). We leverage the comparative method to test the link between environment and cognition in another species—chimpanzees.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Though others have embraced the Anderson & Schooler [4] approach to adaptive forgetting in non-human animals [37,45], some remain sceptical of its utility. Shettleworth [41], for example, questioned whether newspaper headlines reflect the environment in which our memory systems evolved.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reflections of the social environment in chimpanzee memory: applying rational analysis beyond humans

et al. 2016

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In cognitive science, the rational analysis framework allows modelling of how physical and social environments impose information-processing demands onto cognitive systems. In humans, for example, past social contact among individuals predicts their future contact with linear and power functions. These features of the human environment constrain the optimal way to remember information and probably shape how memory records are retained and retrieved. We offer a primer on how biologists can apply rational analysis to study animal behaviour. Using chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) as a case study, we modelled 19 years of observational data on their social contact patterns. Much like humans, the frequency of past encounters in chimpanzees linearly predicted future encounters, and the recency of past encounters predicted future encounters with a power function. Consistent with the rational analyses carried out for human memory, these findings suggest that chimpanzee memory performance should reflect those environmental regularities. In re-analysing existing chimpanzee memory data, we found that chimpanzee memory patterns mirrored their social contact patterns. Our findings hint that human and chimpanzee memory systems may have evolved to solve similar information-processing problems. Overall, rational analysis offers novel theoretical and methodological avenues for the comparative study of cognition.

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“…As another example, we have used a cognitive model (van der Vaart et al 2011(van der Vaart et al , 2012 to investigate the re-caching behavior of scrub jays (Emery and Clayton 2001;Dally et al 2006). The model consists of a kind of 'virtual bird', with a memory system based on ACT-R, a cognitive model designed to study humans (Anderson 2007).…”

Section: A Helpful Tool: Computational Modelingmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Theory of mind’ in animals: ways to make progress

Vaart

Hemelrijk

2012

Synthese

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Whether any non-human animal can attribute mental states to others remains the subject of extensive debate. This despite the fact that several species have behaved as if they have a 'theory of mind' in various behavioral tasks. In this paper, we review the reasons of skeptics for their doubts: That existing experimental setups cannot distinguish between 'mind readers' and 'behavior readers', that results that seem to indicate 'theory of mind' may come from studies that are insufficiently controlled, and that our own intuitive biases may lead us to interpret behavior more 'cognitively' than is necessary. The merits of each claim and suggested solution are weighed. The conclusion is that while it is true that existing setups cannot conclusively demonstrate 'theory of mind' in non-human animals, focusing on this fact is unlikely to be productive. Instead, the more interesting question is how sophisticated their social reasoning can be, whether it is about 'unobservable inner experiences' or not. Therefore, it is important to address concerns about the setup and interpretation of specific experiments. To alleviate the impact of intuitive biases, various strategies have been proposed in the literature. These include a deeper understanding of associative learning, a better knowledge of the limited 'theory of mind' humans actually use, and thinking of animal cognition in an embodied, embedded way; that is, being aware that constraints outside of the brain, and outside of the body, may naturally predispose individuals to produce behavior that looks smart without requiring complex cognition. To enable this kind of thinking, a powerful methodological tool is advocated: Computational modeling, namely agent-based modeling and, particularly, cognitive modeling. By explicitly simulating the rules and representations that underlie animal E. van der Vaart (B) · C. K. Hemelrijk Behavioural Ecology and Self-Organisation, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands e-mail: e.e.van.der.vaart@rug.nl E. van der Vaart Institute of Artificial Intelligence, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands 123 336 Synthese (2014) 191:335-354 performance on specific tasks, it becomes much easier to look past one's own biases and to see what cognitive processes might actually be occurring.

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Corvid caching: Insights from a cognitive model.

Cited by 13 publications

References 46 publications

Corvid Re-Caching without ‘Theory of Mind’: A Model

Corvid Re-Caching without ‘Theory of Mind’: A Model

Reflections of the social environment in chimpanzee memory: applying rational analysis beyond humans

‘Theory of mind’ in animals: ways to make progress

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