Memory for Distant Past Events in Chimpanzees and Orangutans

Martín-Ordás, Gema; Berntsen, Dorthe; Call, Josep

doi:10.1016/j.cub.2013.06.017

Cited by 90 publications

(87 citation statements)

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“…Consequently a broad body of research has focused on the content, rather than the experience, of episodic memory to develop animal models (Clayton & Dickinson, 1998; with almost exclusive emphasis placed on the integration of what happened, where it happened, and when (Clayton & Dickinson, 1998) or on which occasion it happened (Eacott & Easton, 2010;Eacott & Norman, 2004). According to these criteria, episodic memory and has been reported in rats (Eacott & Norman, 2004;Langston & Wood, 2010;Ergorul & Eichenbaum, 2004;Babb & Crystal, 2005Kart-Teke et al 2006), mice (Davis et al 2013), birds (Clayton & Dickinson, 1998), chimpanzees (Martin-Ordas et al 2013) and cuttlefish (JozetAlves et al 2013). In the absence of a demonstration of subjective experience to definitively show correspondence across animal and human memory systems, the memory capability demonstrated in the what-where-when (WWWhen) and what-where-which (WWWhich) memory paradigms has been termed episodic-like memory (Clayton & Dickinson, 1998).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Disambiguating past events: Accurate source memory for time and context depends on different retrieval processes

Persson

Ainge

O'Connor

2016

Neurobiology of Learning and Memory

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Please cite this article as: Persson, B.M., Ainge, J.A., O'Connor, A.R., Disambiguating past events: Accurate source memory for time and context depends on different retrieval processes, Neurobiology of Learning and Memory (2016), doi: http://dx.doi.org/10. 1016/j.nlm.2016.05.002 This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. These models aim to capture the testable features of the definition of human episodic memory which stresses the temporal component of the memory as a unique piece of source information that allows us to disambiguate one memory from another. Recently though, it has been suggested that a more accurate model of human episodic memory would include contextual rather than temporal source information, as humans' memory for time is relatively poor. Here, two experiments were carried out investigating human memory for temporal and contextual source information, along with the underlying dual process retrieval processes, using an immersive virtual environment paired with a 'Remember-Know' memory task. Experiment 1 (n = 28) showed that contextual information could only be retrieved accurately using recollection, while temporal information could be retrieved using either recollection or familiarity.Experiment 2 (n = 24), which used a more difficult task, resulting in reduced item recognition rates and therefore less potential for contamination by ceiling effects, replicated the pattern of results from Experiment 1. Dual process theory predicts that it should only be possible to retrieve source context from an event using recollection, and our results are consistent with this prediction. That temporal information can be retrieved using familiarity alone suggests that it may be incorrect to view temporal context as analogous to other typically used source contexts. This latter finding supports the alternative proposal that time since presentation may simply be reflected in the strength of memory trace at retrieval -a measure ideally suited to trace strength interrogation using familiarity, as is typically conceptualised within the dual process framework.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Disambiguating past events: Accurate source memory for time and context depends on different retrieval processes

Persson

Ainge

O'Connor

2016

Neurobiology of Learning and Memory

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“…At test, they could not see the novel object from their starting point, but were able to use the contextual information to successfully determine which arm (where) the novel object was located, thus showing memory of where, and in which context, an item was located. Similarly, Martin-Ordas et al (2013) found that chimpanzees and orangutans were able to correctly remember the location of a hidden tool when presented with features that overlapped with the tool hiding event. In order to retrieve the correct location, the apes needed to distinguish between similar events that shared many features with each other, such as the same experimenter, the same room, and the use of tools.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…In the animal literature, research on memory for past events has shown that information present at the time of encoding can be an effective cue at retrieval (Clayton & Dickinson, 1998;Eacott, Easton, & Zinkivskay, 2005;Martin-Ordas, Berntsen, & Call, 2013;Mendes & Call, 2014). For instance, Eacott et al (2005) showed that rats could use a contextual feature that was present at encoding and retrieval to successfully locate a desired object.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…After a delay, apes were assessed on whether they could remember which object type was rewarded with which experimenter. We used a retention period of two and ten weeks (between-subjects), as previous research has shown that apes are capable of remembering information after both these time periods (Lewis et al, 2017b;Martin-Ordas et al, 2013;Mendes & Call, 2014), with no significant decline in performance from two to ten weeks (Lewis et al, 2017b). Furthermore, if the apes show successful binding of a particular object type to a specific person, we wanted to investigate whether they could use this information to infer by exclusion.…”

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Remembering past exchanges: Apes fail to use social cues

Lewis¹,

Bernsten²,

Call³

2018

AB&C

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-Nonhuman primates can remember events from their distant past. Furthermore, they can distinguish between very similar events by the process of binding. So far, research into long-term memory and binding has focused on the binding of contextual information, such as spatial surroundings. As such, we aimed to investigate if apes can bind and retrieve other types of information, specifically, social information. We presented great apes with three different object types; they learnt to exchange (via reinforcement) one of the object types with one experimenter and another type with a second, different, experimenter. The remaining object type was not reinforced by either of the experimenters. After a delay of two or ten weeks, we assessed the apes' memory of which object type was exchanged with which experimenter. Additionally, we introduced a new experimenter to see if the apes could infer by exclusion that the remaining object type should be exchanged with the new experimenter. The apes successfully remembered which object types were exchanged, but failed to distinguish which object type was exchanged with whom. This failure to bind an object type to a specific person may have resulted from the apes learning to use a rule based on recency, as opposed to learning a conditional rule involving social information. However, results from a second experiment suggested they fail to incorporate social information even when no other information could guide successful performance. Our findings are consistent with research showing long-term memory in primates, but suggest that social information may not be bound in memory as readily as spatial or contextual information.

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“…In humans at least, episodic memories are easily cued by relevant information (Tulving & Thomson, 1973), and recent evidence suggests that great apes too can be cued to representations of past events from up to three years earlier (Martin-Ordas, Berntsen, & Call, 2013). Furthermore, we know that great apes are capable of solving means-ends problems mentally, rather than through trial-and-error learning .…”

Section: Empirical Concernsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The nature, ontogeny, and phylogeny of episodic foresight

Redshaw¹

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Much attention has recently been given to the psychological capacity for 'episodic foresight', which involves imagining, preparing for, and actively shaping specific future events.Because of the relative youth of the field, however, many questions about the nature, ontogeny, and phylogeny of this capacity remain unanswered. Here I present a number of theoretical perspectives and empirical investigations that attempt to answer some of these questions.In Chapter 2, I provide the first review of evidence for the development of numerous cognitive components that have been implicated in episodic foresight, and the future-oriented behaviours these components enable. I find that the components develop along varying trajectories throughout childhood and beyond, but between ages three and five critical milestones are achieved in each of them. And indeed, around this time children also begin to show evidence of flexible future-oriented behaviour in diverse contexts. I then present four chapters describing empirical studies of novel future-oriented behaviours in children around these ages.In Chapter 3's study, I measured children's capacity to recall a problem from the past and select an object that could solve that problem in a deferred future episode. Previous studies assessing children's future-oriented object selection had involved future episodes that were merely hypothetical or occurred immediately after the selection. I found that 4-year-olds could remember a problem from 15 minutes ago in another room, and select an object that would solve the problem upon return to the room after a 5-minute sand-timer had completed a cycle. When compared with previous findings, this result suggests that acting for a deferred future episode may place no extra demands on children's episodic foresight than acting for an immediate future episode.In Chapter 4's studies, I measured children's capacity to seek information that would only be useful in a specific future episode. This behaviour forms a crucial aspect of human learning (e.g., during schooling), but studies had so far focused only on children's information seeking to achieve an immediate goal. In Study 1 (two experiments), I again used the two-room paradigm to show that many 5-year-olds could recall a problem from the past and seek information to solve that problem in the future. Four-year-olds did not perform above chance level when low-level associative explanations were controlled for, but it remained unclear what caused their poor performance. In Study 2, I relaxed memory demands and gave children the opportunity to seek information in the same context as the future problem. Again, 5-year-olds but not 4-year-olds performed above chance level, although even the older children did not perform at ceiling level.In Chapter 5's study, I measured children's capacity to remember to carry out an intended action at a particular future time, in both the presence and absence of cues to perform the action.Previous studies of time-based prospective memory had included event-bas...

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Memory for Distant Past Events in Chimpanzees and Orangutans

Cited by 90 publications

References 35 publications

Disambiguating past events: Accurate source memory for time and context depends on different retrieval processes

Disambiguating past events: Accurate source memory for time and context depends on different retrieval processes

Remembering past exchanges: Apes fail to use social cues

The nature, ontogeny, and phylogeny of episodic foresight

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