Comparative Investigations of Future-Oriented Cognitive Processes

人们花很多时间思考过去和未来(有时被称为心理时间旅行)。能够记住过去，包括事情发生了什么，如何发生，什么时候发生，在一个人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”)，可以帮助人们为眼前并不重要但可能是几小时、几天甚至几年后的事情做好准备(一个简单的例子就是决定下班回家的路上去商店买什么，然后记得去买)。这种灵活规划未来的能力长期以来一直被认为是人类独有的能力。事实上，有人认为动物被困在时间里，它们不能思考过去或未来，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，这样的证据将提供更好的理解人类记忆和行为的进化基础。这项由NSF资助的研究项目由佐治亚州立大学的Michael Beran、Emily Klein和Theodore Evans以及Furman大学的Gilles Einstein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)进行的面向未来的思维和行为的新测试。该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预期记忆和规划能力之间的关系。每个物种都将执行需要前瞻记忆的计算机任务，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它们通过在计算机任务中工作而获得的食物奖励，这样它们就可以在以后获得奖励的机会较少的时候吃下它们。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不同于现在的未来情况做计划，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记忆方面的异同，并将有助于确定其中是否有人类独有的能力。前瞻记忆的失败和未能规划未来可能会对人类产生深远的后果。了解此类失败的原因很重要，并可从广泛的科学方法中受益。这个项目将更好地理解人类和灵长类动物在进化中的涌现以及规划和面向未来的思维和记忆的局限性。这些研究为灵长类记忆的本质、计划行为的起源和前瞻记忆的性质提供了新的观点。

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.