When in doubt, chimpanzees rely on estimates of past reward amounts

Beran, Michael J.; Evans, Theodore A.; Harris, Emily H.

doi:10.1098/rspb.2008.1027

Cited by 10 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…Both species showed nearly the same distribution of responses to the two quantities used in all three ranges used in the experiment. This performance matched that of chimpanzees previously tested (Beran et al, 2009). Because capuchin monkeys are a New World monkey species distantly related to chimpanzees and humans, this shows that the capacity to estimate likely outcomes in uncertain situations is widespread among primate taxa.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 81%

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Humans and monkeys show similar skill in estimating uncertain outcomes

et al. 2012

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When information is incomplete but a choice must be made, individuals sometimes can rely on past experiences to help them assess uncertain outcomes in terms of the probabilities of payoffs. Monkeys (Cebus apella) and humans (Homo sapiens) were presented with a test in which they first made quantity judgments between two clear options. Then, they made choices where only one option was visible, and they had to estimate the quantity in the other option. Both species were guided by past outcomes, as they shifted from selecting the known option to selecting the unknown option at the point at which the known option went from being more than the average rate of return to less than the average rate of return. This comparability across species suggests that tallying ongoing average rates of return from repeated choices occurs spontaneously and likely serves an adaptive purpose when dealing with uncertainty in the environment.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 81%

“…Beran, Evans, and Harris (2009) asked whether, in the face of uncertainty, such as when the quantity in one set was unknown, chimpanzees would use information gathered from their own previous responses to deal with that uncertainty. First, chimpanzees made 15 consecutive judgments between two visible food sets that varied in the number of items across trials.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Humans and monkeys show similar skill in estimating uncertain outcomes

et al. 2012

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“…Added on to these ultimate considerations are experiments and observations targeting proximate mechanisms. In particular, chimpanzees have the capacity for numerical quantification (Boysen & Berntson 1995;Boysen et al 1996;Kawai & Matsuzawa 2000;Beran et al 2008), show significant levels of delayed gratification (Evans & Beran 2007;Rosati et al 2007), inequity detection (Brosnan et al 2005;Brauer et al 2006), prosocial helping in non-food contexts (Warneken & Tomasello 2006;Warneken et al 2007), vengeance (Jensen et al 2007b), discrimination of intentional and accidental actions (Call et al 2004), selectively choosing previous collaborators over non-collaborators in joint cooperation tasks (Melis et al 2006), and recognizing individuals by face and voice (Parr 2003).…”

Section: Reciprocal Altruismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolving the ingredients for reciprocity and spite

Hauser

McAuliffe

Blake

2009

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Darwin never provided a satisfactory account of altruism, but posed the problem beautifully in light of the logic of natural selection. Hamilton and Williams delivered the necessary satisfaction by appealing to kinship, and Trivers showed that kinship was not necessary as long as the originally altruistic act was conditionally reciprocated. From the late 1970s to the present, the kinship theories in particular have been supported by considerable empirical data and elaborated to explore a number of other social interactions such as cooperation, selfishness and punishment, giving us what is now a rich description of the nature of social relationships among organisms. There are, however, two forms of theoretically possible social interactions-reciprocity and spite-that appear absent or nearly so in non-human vertebrates, despite considerable research efforts on a wide diversity of species. We suggest that the rather weak comparative evidence for these interactions is predicted once we consider the requisite socioecological pressures and psychological mechanisms. That is, a consideration of ultimate demands and proximate prerequisites leads to the prediction that reciprocity and spite should be rare in non-human animals, and common in humans. In particular, reciprocity and spite evolved in humans because of adaptive demands on cooperation among unrelated individuals living in large groups, and the integrative capacities of inequity detection, future-oriented decision-making and inhibitory control.

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“…For example, great apes (Call, 2000; Hanus and Call, 2007), monkeys (Hauser et al, 2000; Uller et al, 2003; Evans et al, 2009), elephants Elephas maximus (Irie-Sugimoto et al, 2009; Perdue et al, 2012), domestic dogs Canis lupus familiaris (Ward and Smuts, 2007), coyotes Canis latrans (Baker et al, 2011), wolves Canis lupus (Utrata et al, 2012), sea lions Otaria flavescens (Abramson et al, 2011), salamanders Plethodon cinereus (Uller et al, 2003), and some other species, when presented with two alternatives each comprised of different numbers of food items, prefer the larger quantity. However, when dealing with uncertainty in the environment, animals cannot simply “go for more.” There are some experimental studies in which members of different species are required to choose between foraging options when risk is generated by variability in the amount of reward or by variability in delay to reward (Kacelnik and Bateson, 1996; Heilbronner et al, 2008; Beran et al, 2009, 2012). In nature animals can face even more risky situations when foraging on prey that differ in their dangerousness.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantity judgments in the context of risk/reward decision making in striped field mice: first “count,” then hunt

Panteleeva¹,

Резникова²,

Vygonyailova³

2013

Front. Psychology

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We simulated the situation of risky hunting in the striped field mouse Apodemus agrarius in order to examine whether these animals are able to make a choice between small and large quantities of live prey (ants). In the first (preliminary) experiment we investigated to what extent mice were interested in ants as a live prey and how their hunting activity depended on the quantity of these edible but rather aggressive insects. We placed mice one by one into arenas together with ant groups of different quantities, from 10 to 60. Surprisingly, animals, both wild-caught and laboratory-reared, displayed rather skilled predatory attacks: mice killed and ate from 0.37 ± 003 to 4 ± 0.5 ants per minute. However, there was a threshold number of ants in the arenas when rodents expressed signs of discomfort and started to panic, likely because ants bit them. This threshold corresponds to the dynamic density (about 400 individuals per m2 per min) in the vicinity of anthills and ants' routes in natural environment. In the second experiment mice had to choose between different quantities of ants placed in two transparent tunnels. Ants here served both as food items and as a source of danger. As far as we know, this is the first experimental paradigm based on evaluation of quantity judgments in the context of risk/reward decision making where the animals face a trade-off between the hedonistic value of the prey and the danger it presents. We found that when mice have to choose between 5 vs. 15, 5 vs. 30, and 10 vs. 30 ants, they always tend to prefer the smaller quantity, thus displaying the capacity for distinguishing more from less in order to ensure comfortable hunting. The results of this study are ecologically relevant as they reflect situations and challenges faced by free-living small rodents.

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When in doubt, chimpanzees rely on estimates of past reward amounts

Cited by 10 publications

References 35 publications

Humans and monkeys show similar skill in estimating uncertain outcomes

Humans and monkeys show similar skill in estimating uncertain outcomes

Evolving the ingredients for reciprocity and spite

Quantity judgments in the context of risk/reward decision making in striped field mice: first “count,” then hunt

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