How foraging works: Uncertainty magnifies food-seeking motivation

Abstract

Food uncertainty has the effect of invigorating food-related responses. Psychologists have noted that mammals and birds respond more to a conditioned stimulus that unreliably predicts food delivery, and ecologists have shown that animals (especially small passerines) consume and/or hoard more food and can get fatter when access to that resource is unpredictable. Are these phenomena related? We think they are. Psychologists have proposed several mechanistic interpretations, while ecologists have suggested a functional interpretation: the effect of unpredictability on fat reserves and hoarding behavior is an evolutionary strategy acting against the risk of starvation when food is in short supply. Both perspectives are complementary, and we argue that the psychology of incentive motivational processes can shed some light on the causal mechanisms leading animals to seek and consume more food under uncertainty in the wild. Our theoretical approach is in agreement with neuroscientific data relating to the role of dopamine, a neurotransmitter strongly involved in incentive motivation, and its plausibility has received some explanatory and predictive value with respect to Pavlovian phenomena. Overall, we argue that the occasional and unavoidable absence of food rewards has motivational effects (called incentive hope) that facilitate foraging effort. It is shown that this hypothesis is computationally tenable, leading foragers in an unpredictable environment to consume more food items and to have higher long-term energy storage than foragers in a predictable environment.

Rewards interact with repetition‐dependent learning to enhance long‐term retention of motor memories

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Communication in a Small Herd of Semi-Domestic Elephants another Interpretation of their Social Organization, Social Contract and World View

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What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You: Uncertainty Impairs Executive Function

“…A recent review of animal research by Anselme and Güntürkün (2018) showed that in environments marked by uncertainty about food, animals shifted toward conservation strategies, including caching and hoarding food, eating more, and gaining weight. Thus, uncertainty causes conservation of energy resources even in quite simple animals.…”

“…A complete list of the mediators and moderators tested in these studies is presented in the Supplementary Materials . The revised theory, that uncertainty serves as a cue to stimulate conservation, has emerged as a more plausible alternative, particularly in light of the recent review by Anselme and Güntürkün (2018) .…”