Reflections of the social environment in chimpanzee memory: Applying rational analysis beyond humans

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Licence: CC BY 4.0
ID Serval
serval:BIB_A0F363DFDA67
Type
Article: article d'un périodique ou d'un magazine.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Titre
Reflections of the social environment in chimpanzee memory: Applying rational analysis beyond humans
Périodique
Royal Society Open Science
Auteur⸱e⸱s
Stevens J. R., Marewski J. N., Schooler L. J., Gilby I. C.
ISSN
2054-5703
Statut éditorial
Publié
Date de publication
08/2016
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Volume
3
Numéro
8
Pages
160293
Langue
anglais
Résumé
In cognitive science, the rational analysis framework allows modelling of how physical and social environments impose information-processing demands onto cognitive systems. In humans, for example, past social contact among individuals predicts their future contact with linear and power functions. These features of the human environment constrain the optimal way to remember information and probably shape how memory records are retained and retrieved. We offer a primer on how biologists can apply rational analysis to study animal behaviour. Using chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) as a case study, we modelled 19 years of observational data on their social contact patterns. Much like humans, the frequency of past encounters in chimpanzees linearly predicted future encounters, and the recency of past encounters predicted future encounters with a power function. Consistent with the rational analyses carried out for human memory, these findings suggest that chimpanzee memory performance should reflect those environmental regularities. In re-analysing existing chimpanzee memory data, we found that chimpanzee memory patterns mirrored their social contact patterns. Our findings hint that human and chimpanzee memory systems may have evolved to solve similar information-processing problems. Overall, rational analysis offers novel theoretical and methodological avenues for the comparative study of cognition.
Mots-clé
Chimpanzees, Comparative cognition, Forgetting, Memory, Rational analysis, Social contact
Open Access
Oui
Création de la notice
26/07/2016 13:25
Dernière modification de la notice
30/04/2021 6:13
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