Chimpanze spatial cognition, foraging theory, and the question of episodic memory

黑猩猩空间认知、觅食理论和情景记忆问题

• 批准号: 7809053
• 负责人: Kenneth Sayers
• 金额: $ 5.05万
• 依托单位: GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-02-01 至 2012-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/7809053
• 关键词: Aging; Animals; Area; Cognition; Data; Decision Making; Disease; Distant; Economics; Episodic memory; Event; Evolution; Exhibits; Food; Gestures; Goals; Human; Individual; Injury; Language; Location; Manuals; Memory; Modeling; Movement; Pan Genus; Persons; Primates; Protocols documentation; Recovery; Recruitment Activity; Research; Research Design; Resources; Rewards; Risk; Simulate; Speech; System; Testing; Time; Training; Universities; Visit; Work; base; food resource; long term memory; memory recall; memory recognition; meter; preference; prospective; research study; theories; vocalization

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This project will examine spatial cognition in foraging tasks with lexigram-trained chimpanzees at the Language Research Center, Georgia State University. Using protocol that has proven successful in past experiments, multiple food items will be hidden by the experimenter in a woodland visible but not accessible to the chimpanzees. An individual subject will watch, from an outdoor enclosure, as items are hidden. The chimpanzee will then later be able to, in a room with no view of the woodland, recruit a naive caretaker to recover the food items. Recruitment may involve a combination of lexigram-use, gesture, and vocalization. The interval between hiding and recruitment will vary between 15 minutes to imposed overnight delays. Subjects will then be given the opportunity to direct the uninformed person to the test items by whatever means necessary, including manual pointing, other gestures, and vocalization. Previous data has shown that chimpanzees will rank-order the recovery of hidden food items by type, quantity and distance from the outdoor enclosure. Several other ecologically-salient variables, taken from foraging theory and long thought to be integral to economic decision-making, will be investigated. In the first experiment, it is predicted that chimpanzees will rank order the recovery of food items by the handling time associated with them. Chimpanzees will also be trained to identify variable versus stable rewards with equal means using marked containers. It is expected that chimpanzees will exhibit preference based on variance (risk-sensitivity) and that these preferences will be extended to the rank-order recovery of items in the hidden foods experiment. In another experiment, large numbers of foods will be hidden in multiple aggregations (simulated "patches"). It is expected that chimpanzees will be able to remember aggregation size in their recovery of food items and exploit patches as predicted by an ecological model, the marginal value theorem. Lastly, the study will investigate the ability of chimpanzees to remember the "where" and "when," and multiple components of the "what" of an event, and will add significant data to the ongoing debate of whether any nonhuman animals possess an episodic memory system. This study would represent the first attempt to investigate many of these variables in the context of long-term memory. In addition, the experiments detailed are analogous to situations in which humans who lack speech must communicate their wants and desires, and provide directions for the study of memory in such individuals. The research also includes rare testing of recall memory in a nonhuman species, and is related to the concepts of prospective and episodic memory, all of which are particularly susceptible to decline in humans due to aging, injury, or disease.

描述（由申请人提供）：本项目将在乔治亚州立大学语言研究中心研究经过词法训练的黑猩猩在觅食任务中的空间认知。使用在过去的实验中被证明是成功的协议，实验者将多种食物隐藏在黑猩猩可见但无法接近的林地中。当物品被隐藏时，一个单独的实验对象将从室外的围栏观看。随后，黑猩猩将能够在一个看不到森林的房间里，招募一个天真的看护者来收回食物。招募可能涉及词汇使用、手势和发声的组合。躲藏和招募之间的间隔时间从15分钟到强制延迟一整夜不等。然后，受试者将有机会通过任何必要的方式，包括手动指向，其他手势和发声，引导不知情的人到测试项目。先前的数据表明，黑猩猩会根据食物的种类、数量和与室外围栏的距离对隐藏的食物进行排序。其他几个生态显著变量，取自觅食理论，长期以来被认为是经济决策的组成部分，将被调查。在第一个实验中，人们预测黑猩猩会根据处理食物的时间对食物的回收进行排序。黑猩猩还将接受训练，用同样的方法识别可变和稳定的奖励，使用有标记的容器。预计黑猩猩将表现出基于方差（风险敏感性）的偏好，并且这些偏好将扩展到隐藏食物实验中物品的等级顺序恢复。在另一个实验中，大量的食物将被隐藏在多个聚合体中（模拟的“斑块”）。根据边际值定理这一生态模型的预测，黑猩猩将能够记住食物的聚集大小，并利用斑块。最后，这项研究将调查黑猩猩记住“地点”和“时间”的能力，以及事件“是什么”的多个组成部分，并将为正在进行的关于是否有非人类动物拥有情景记忆系统的争论提供重要的数据。这项研究将首次尝试在长期记忆的背景下调查这些变量。此外，这些详细的实验类似于缺乏语言能力的人必须表达他们的需求和欲望的情况，并为研究这些人的记忆提供了方向。这项研究还包括对非人类物种的回忆记忆进行罕见的测试，并与前瞻性和情景性记忆的概念有关，所有这些都特别容易因衰老、受伤或疾病而导致人类记忆力下降。