The Prospective Cognition of Food Caching and Recovery by Western Scrub-Jays (Alphelocoma californica)

Abstract

The role of prospective cognition in food caching and recovery by western scrub-jays (Aphelocoma californica) is reviewed. These birds anticipate the short-term consequences of searching for cached food at recovery by reducing their searches for devalued food items. Two further lines of evidence suggest that the jays are also capable of more long-term prospection. First, the caching of food items decreases when they are consistently degraded or pilfered at recovery over cache-recovery intervals that preclude direct delayed reinforcement and punishment. Second, the jays anticipate the pilfering of their caches by another bird, which observes the caching episode, by engaging in various cache-protection behaviors. These finding suggest that the jays are capable of a form of prospective mental "time travel".The last decade has seen an increasing interest in prospective and retrospective cognition by non-human animals. In part, this interest has its origin in Tulving's (983) claim that only humans have an episodic memory system, which allows them to mentally travel through subjective time to reminisce about specific past events. While animals can acquire extensive general information about their environment, according to Tulving (983, p. ) "they cannot travel back in the past in their own minds". The scope of this "temporal myopia" was extended from the past to future by Suddendorf and Corballis (997) in the formulation of their 'mental time travel hypothesis', which claims that animals live in the present, being incapable of episodic recall of specific past events and unable to contemplate possible states of affairs beyond the immediate future. Suddendorf and Corballis based their hypothesis on a review of primate cognition. More recently, Roberts (2002) reached a similar conclusion that animals are, to use his words, "stuck in time" by reviewing the evidence from studies of a variety of species. Moreover, in recent writings, Tulving has also endorsed the prospective component of the mental time travel hypothesis by stating that "mental time travel allows one, as an "owner" of episodic memory ("self"), through the medium of autonoetic awareness, to remember one's own previous "thoughtabout" experiences, as well as to "think about" one's own possible future experiences" (Tulving, 2005, pp. 9).About 0 years ago, we started a research program on the retrospective component of the mental time travel hypothesis in which we investigated the mnemonic processes mediating the recovery of food caches by western scrub-jays. Many species scatter-hoard food throughout their territories when

Old and New Approaches to Animal Cognition: There Is Not “One Cognition”

“…Humans are also outperformed in spatial memory tasks, in particular by specific bird species. The most impressive spatial memory has been demonstrated by members of food-storing bird families like parrots and corvids (see Shettleworth 1983; for overviews, see Clayton et al 2006;Clayton and Emery 2002). Some of these bird species (e.g., Clark's nutcracker Nucifraga columbiana and marsh tit Poecile palustris) are able to remember over 100 cache sites after time delays of several months, by far exceeding the average human memory.…”

Assessing Machine Volition: An Ordinal Scale for Rating Artificial and Natural Systems

“…With artificial systems, however, we probably have a better sense of the internal structure and can determine if LTM was used. An example of strong evidence in natural systems includes such behaviors as food caching in scrub-jays (Clayton, Emery, & Dickinson, 2006); the birds not only seem to remember the locations where they hide their food, but also if food they stored is perishable and a long period of time has passed, they will not visit their likely spoiled caches.…”

The effect of episodic future simulation and motivation on young children’s induced-state episodic foresight

“…The Bischof-Kohler hypothesis predicts that non-human animals cannot consider future states that are not being currently experienced ( Bischof-Kohler, 1985 ). According to this hypothesis, only humans can anticipate future states such as hunger or thirst that are outside of their present experience (although see Clayton, Emery, & Dickinson, 2006 ; Correia, Dickinson, & Clayton, 2007 ; Raby, Alexis, Dickinson, & Clayton, 2007 for evidence that Western scrub-jays have basic prospective abilities and can act independently of their current motivation). Interestingly, there is also ample evidence to suggest that children and even adults struggle to accurately project themselves into the future, especially when it comes to physiological states (e.g., Atance & Meltzoff, 2006 ; Kramer, Goldfarb, Tashjian, & Lagattuta, 2017 ; Nisbett & Kanouse, 1969 ).…”