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

Abstract

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.

Some Metatheoretical Reflections on Adaptive Decision Making and the Strategy Selection Problem

“…That approach allows deriving predictions about cognitive performance from the statistical structure of environments (as opposed to relying exclusively on assumptions about the mind). It has been used in several domains, including problem solving, categorization, causal inference, and memory (e.g., Anderson, ; Chater & Oaksford, ), and it has even been applied to non‐human (i.e., Chimpanzee) cognition (Stevens, Marewski, Schooler, & Gilby, )…”

Developmental change in prefrontal cortex recruitment supports the emergence of value-guided memory

“…Across many environments, the frequency of encountering something in the past predicts the frequency of encountering it in the future. In this way, frequency can signal information utility ( Anderson and Milson, 1989 ; Anderson and Schooler, 1991 ; Liu et al, 2021 ; Pachur et al, 2014 ; Rich and Gureckis, 2018 ; Stevens et al, 2016 ) — if individuals are likely to encounter something often in the future, encoding information about it is likely to be valuable. For example, remembering the supermarket aisle of an ingredient with which one often cooks is likely to facilitate greater reward gain than remembering the aisle of an ingredient one almost never uses.…”

Ecological rationality

“…Do these disturbances also have more potential to endure, just as information is not simply sorted out by digitalized social systems over time through decay or other forms of information loss (see Helbing, 2015)? Is cooperation aided by forgiving, and is forgiving aided by forgetting, such as the forgetting of past aggressions (e.g., Stevens, Marewski, Schooler, & Gilby, 2016)? How would challenges likely to have been important to human cognitive evolution (e.g., cooperating, mating) in the past be transformed if, in the future, human information-processing systems only received information via digital technology?…”