Comparative Investigations of Future-Oriented Cognitive Processes

人们花很多时间思考过去和未来（有时被称为精神时间旅行）。能够记住过去，包括事情发生的内容、方式和时间，在不确定如何表现的新情况下会非常有帮助。为未来做计划，并记住执行这些计划（称为“前瞻性记忆”），可以帮助人们为那些不是立即重要的事情做好准备，但从现在开始的几个小时、几天甚至几年之后可能很重要（一个简单的例子是，下班回家的路上决定在商店买什么，然后记住去做）。长期以来，这种灵活规划未来的能力一直被认为是人类独有的能力。事实上，有人认为动物“被时间困住了”，它们无法思考过去或未来，因为它们的行为只受当前需求和环境的影响。然而，动物可能表现出精神时间旅行的能力，这样的证据将更好地理解人类记忆和行为的进化基础。这项由美国国家科学基金会资助的研究项目由乔治亚州立大学的迈克尔·贝兰、艾米丽·克莱因和西奥多·埃文斯以及弗曼大学的吉尔斯·爱因斯坦进行，包括对人类和三种灵长类动物（黑猩猩、恒河猴和卷尾猴）的面向未来的思维和行为进行了新的测试。这个项目将测试每个物种预测未来情况和计划未来行动的能力，以确定人类和其他灵长类动物的前瞻性记忆和计划能力之间的关系。每个物种都将执行需要前瞻性记忆的计算机任务，并且必须在任务开始时计划未来的行动。一项实验将评估灵长类动物是否能够学会囤积通过完成计算机任务获得的食物奖励，以便在以后获得奖励的机会较少时吃掉它们。另一项实验将测试灵长类动物是否会使用前瞻记忆来记住它们未来需要做的事情。在某些情况下，灵长类动物可能会显示出它们可以为与当前情况不同的未来情况做计划，这种表现将直接与人类的表现进行比较。这项研究将确定灵长类动物和人类在计划行为和前瞻性记忆方面的异同，并有助于确定这些能力是否属于人类独有。前瞻记忆的失败和对未来规划的失败会对人类产生深远的影响。了解这些失败的原因很重要，并且可以从广泛的科学方法中受益。这个项目将提供一个更好的理解进化的出现，以及限制，计划和面向未来的思想和记忆在人类和灵长类动物。这些研究为灵长类动物记忆的本质、计划行为的起源和前瞻性记忆的本质提供了新的思路。

People spend a lot of time thinking about the past and the future (what is sometimes called mental time travel). Being able to remember the past, including what, how, and when things happened, can be very helpful in new situations when one is not sure how to behave. Planning for the future, and remembering to carry out those plans (called "prospective memory"), helps people prepare for things that are not immediately important but could be important hours, days, or even years from now (a simple example would be deciding what to pick up at the store on your way home from work and then remembering to do it). This ability to flexibly plan for the future has long been thought to be a uniquely human ability. In fact, it has been argued that animals are "stuck in time," and they cannot think about the past or future because their behavior is affected only by their current needs and surroundings. However, animals may show capacities for mental time travel, and such evidence would provide a better understanding of the evolutionary foundations of human memory and behavior. The NSF-funded research project conducted by Michael Beran, Emily Klein, and Theodore Evans at Georgia State University and Gilles Einstein at Furman University includes new tests of future-oriented thought and behavior in humans and three primate species (chimpanzees, rhesus monkeys, and capuchin monkeys). This project will test each species' ability to anticipate future situations and plan future actions so as to determine the relationship between the prospective memory and planning abilities of humans and other primates. Each species will perform computer tasks in which prospective memory is needed and future actions must be planned at the beginning of the task. One experiment will assess whether primates can learn to hoard food rewards that they have earned by working on a computer task, so that they can eat them later when they have fewer chances to earn rewards. Another experiment will test whether primates will use prospective memory to remember something that they need to do in the future. In some cases, primates may show that they can plan for future situations that are different from present ones, and this performance will be directly compared to human performance. This research will determine similarities and differences between primates and humans in their planning behavior and prospective memory and will help determine whether any of these abilities are unique to humans.Failures of prospective memory and failures to plan for the future can have profound consequences for humans. Understanding the causes of such failures is important and can benefit from a broad scientific approach. This project will provide a better understanding of the evolutionary emergence, as well as the limits, of planning and future-oriented thought and memory in humans and primates. These studies offer new ideas about the nature of primate memory, the origins of planned behavior, and the nature of prospective memory.