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Observed behavior can be the result of complex cognitive processes that are influenced by environmental factors, physiological process, and situational features. Pressure, a feature of a situation in which an individual’s outcome is impacted by his or her own ability to perform, has been traditionally treated as a human-specific phenomenon and only recently have pressure-related deficits been considered in relation to other species. However, there are strong similarities in biological and cognitive systems among mammals (and beyond), and high-pressure situations are at least theoretically common in the wild. We hypothesize that other species are sensitive to pressure and that we can learn about the evolutionary trajectory of pressure responses by manipulating pressure experimentally in these other species. Recent literature indicates that, as in humans, pressure influences responses in non-human primates, with either deficits in ability to perform (“choking”) or an ability to thrive when the stakes are high. Here, we synthesize the work to date on performance under pressure in humans and how hormones might be related to individual differences in responses. Then, we discuss why we would expect to see similar effects of pressure in non-humans and highlight the existing evidence for how other species respond. We argue that evidence suggests that other species respond to high-pressure contexts in similar ways as humans, and that responses to pressure are a critical missing piece of our understanding of cognition in human and non-human animals. Understanding pressure’s effects could provide insight into individual variation in decision-making in comparative cognition and the evolution of human decision-making.
Observed behavior can be the result of complex cognitive processes that are influenced by environmental factors, physiological process, and situational features. Pressure, a feature of a situation in which an individual’s outcome is impacted by his or her own ability to perform, has been traditionally treated as a human-specific phenomenon and only recently have pressure-related deficits been considered in relation to other species. However, there are strong similarities in biological and cognitive systems among mammals (and beyond), and high-pressure situations are at least theoretically common in the wild. We hypothesize that other species are sensitive to pressure and that we can learn about the evolutionary trajectory of pressure responses by manipulating pressure experimentally in these other species. Recent literature indicates that, as in humans, pressure influences responses in non-human primates, with either deficits in ability to perform (“choking”) or an ability to thrive when the stakes are high. Here, we synthesize the work to date on performance under pressure in humans and how hormones might be related to individual differences in responses. Then, we discuss why we would expect to see similar effects of pressure in non-humans and highlight the existing evidence for how other species respond. We argue that evidence suggests that other species respond to high-pressure contexts in similar ways as humans, and that responses to pressure are a critical missing piece of our understanding of cognition in human and non-human animals. Understanding pressure’s effects could provide insight into individual variation in decision-making in comparative cognition and the evolution of human decision-making.
Cognitive, comparative, and developmental psychologists have long been intrigued by humans’ and animals’ capacity to respond to abstract relations like sameness and difference, because this capacity may underlie crucial aspects of cognition like analogical reasoning. Recently, this capacity has been explored in higher-order, relational matching-to-sample (RMTS) tasks in which humans and animals try to complete analogies of sameness and difference between disparate groups of items. The authors introduced a new paradigm to this area, by yoking the relational-matching cue to a perceptual-matching cue. Then, using established algorithms for shape distortion, the perceptual cue was weakened and eliminated. Humans’ RMTS performance easily transcended the elimination of perceptual support. In contrast, RMTS performance by six macaques faltered as they were weaned from perceptual support. No macaque showed evidence of mature RMTS performance, even given more than 260,000 training trials during which we tried to coax a relational-matching performance from them. It is an important species difference that macaques show so hesitant a response to conceptual relations when humans respond to them so effortlessly. It raises theoretical questions about the emergence of this crucial capacity during humans’ cognitive evolution and during humans’ cognitive development.
Three chimpanzees performed a computerized memory task in which auditory feedback about the accuracy of each response was delayed. The delivery of food rewards for correct responses was also delayed and occurred in a separate location from the response. Crucially, if the chimpanzees did not move to the reward-delivery site before food was dispensed, the reward was lost and could not be recovered. Chimpanzees were significantly more likely to move to the dispenser on trials they had completed correctly than on those they had completed incorrectly, and these movements occurred before any external feedback about the outcome of their responses. Thus, chimpanzees moved (or not) on the basis of their confidence in their responses, and these confidence movements aligned closely with objective task performance. These untrained, spontaneous confidence judgments demonstrated that chimpanzees monitored their own states of knowing and not knowing and adjusted their behavior accordingly.
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