{"title":"Cuttlefish favour their current need to hide rather than their future need for food.","authors":"Poncet Lisa, Roig Anthony, Pauline Billard, Bellanger Cécile, Jozet-Alves Christelle","doi":"10.3758/s13420-024-00663-y","DOIUrl":"10.3758/s13420-024-00663-y","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Episodic memory and future thinking are generally considered as two parts of the same mental time travelling system in vertebrates. Modern cephalopods, with their independent evolutionary lineage and their complex cognitive abilities, appear as promising species to determine whether these abilities have separate evolutionary histories or not. In our study, we tested future-planning abilities in a cephalopod species which has been shown to possess episodic-like memory abilities: the common cuttlefish. They were tested on their ability to plan for a future need for food instead of following their current need to hide. To explore the flexibility in such future-planning behaviour, we varied the protective value of the shelter. No future-planning behaviour was observed in cuttlefish during our experiment regardless of the value of the shelter provided. From one perspective, as cuttlefish were facing a trade-off decision, the attractiveness of the shelter (to satisfy their current need) might have been of higher value than their future need to eat (low drive for food). By contrast, our results might reflect an inability of cuttlefish to act in the present to secure future needs, suggesting that episodic memory and future planning might be distinct cognitive traits with their own evolutionary histories. Identifying both similarities and differences in complex cognition between vertebrate species and cephalopods is important to pinpoint which evolutionary pressures have led to the emergence of complex cognitive abilities.</p>","PeriodicalId":49914,"journal":{"name":"Learning & Behavior","volume":"53 1","pages":"128-135"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143544282","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Learning & BehaviorPub Date : 2025-03-01Epub Date: 2024-07-26DOI: 10.3758/s13420-024-00634-3
Michael J Beran
{"title":"There's \"magic\" in comparative cognition.","authors":"Michael J Beran","doi":"10.3758/s13420-024-00634-3","DOIUrl":"10.3758/s13420-024-00634-3","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Among the many important empirical and theoretical contributions in her career Clayton and her colleagues advanced the idea that comparative cognition researchers would benefit from considering the role of magic and the techniques of the magician in some areas of cross-species cognitive study. They provided compelling and exciting studies using the techniques of the magician and demonstrated how those affect nonhuman animals that rely on vision, showing that there are similarities and dissimilarities in how susceptible some nonhuman species are to the magician's effects that typically work so well on human observers.</p>","PeriodicalId":49914,"journal":{"name":"Learning & Behavior","volume":" ","pages":"11-13"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141767867","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Learning & BehaviorPub Date : 2025-03-01Epub Date: 2024-09-03DOI: 10.3758/s13420-024-00639-y
Noam Miller
{"title":"Why we should study animal consciousness.","authors":"Noam Miller","doi":"10.3758/s13420-024-00639-y","DOIUrl":"10.3758/s13420-024-00639-y","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness (Andrews et al., 2024) highlights increasing empirical evidence supporting the existence of sentience in many animal species. The views in the declaration rest on an increasingly popular theoretical approach that comparative psychologists could use to guide research on non-human consciousness.</p>","PeriodicalId":49914,"journal":{"name":"Learning & Behavior","volume":" ","pages":"3-4"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142127175","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Learning & BehaviorPub Date : 2025-03-01Epub Date: 2024-10-16DOI: 10.3758/s13420-024-00647-y
Victor Ajuwon, Tiago Monteiro, Alexandra K Schnell, Nicola S Clayton
{"title":"To know or not to know? Curiosity and the value of prospective information in animals.","authors":"Victor Ajuwon, Tiago Monteiro, Alexandra K Schnell, Nicola S Clayton","doi":"10.3758/s13420-024-00647-y","DOIUrl":"10.3758/s13420-024-00647-y","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Humans and other animals often seek instrumental information to strategically improve their decisions in the present. Our curiosity also leads us to acquire non-instrumental information that is not immediately useful but can be encoded in memory and stored for use in the future by means of episodic recall. Despite its adaptive benefits and central role in human cognition, questions remain about the cognitive mechanisms and evolutionary origins that underpin curiosity. Here, we comparatively review recent empirical studies that some authors have suggested reflects curiosity in nonhuman animals. We focus on findings from laboratory tasks in which individuals can choose to gain advanced information about uncertain future outcomes, even though the information cannot be used to increase future rewards and is often costly. We explore the prevalence of preferences in these tasks across animals, discuss the theoretical advances that they have promoted, and outline some limitations in contemporary research. We also discuss several features of human curiosity that can guide future empirical research aimed at characterising and understanding curiosity in animals. Though the prevalence of curiosity in animals is actively debated, we surmise that investigating behavioural candidates for curiosity-motivated behaviour in a broader range of species and contexts, should help promote theoretical advances in our understanding of cognitive principles and evolutionary pressures that support curiosity-driven behaviour.</p>","PeriodicalId":49914,"journal":{"name":"Learning & Behavior","volume":" ","pages":"114-127"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11880187/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142479193","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Learning & BehaviorPub Date : 2025-03-01Epub Date: 2024-09-03DOI: 10.3758/s13420-024-00637-0
Francesca M Cornero, Nicola S Clayton
{"title":"Object permanence in rooks (Corvus frugilegus): Individual differences and behavioral considerations.","authors":"Francesca M Cornero, Nicola S Clayton","doi":"10.3758/s13420-024-00637-0","DOIUrl":"10.3758/s13420-024-00637-0","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Piagetian object permanence (OP) refers to the ability to know that an object continues to exist when out of sight: In humans, it develops in six stages. Species of great apes, other mammals, and birds (parrots, corvids, and pigeons) have been shown to possess partial or full OP, which is a prerequisite for more complex physical cognition abilities they may possess. In birds, the greatest variation is in Stage 6 (invisible displacements) and in \"A-not-B\" errors-incorrectly persevering in searching an empty location rewarded previously. Caching abilities have been invoked as holding explanatory power over results in corvids, for which this error is sometimes completely absent. The rook (Corvus frugilegus), a cognitively advanced, social, caching corvid, has not yet been studied for OP. This study applies tasks of one OP scale commonly adapted for nonhuman animals, Uzgiris and Hunt's Scale 1, as well as later-conceived tasks 16 and S, to a sample of adult, captive rooks. One rook demonstrated full OP (Stage 6b, multiple invisible displacements), whereas other individuals varied, attaining between Stages 5a (single visible displacements) and 6a (single invisible displacements). Like some corvids, a few made transient \"A-not-B\" errors. Behavioral considerations potentially underlying observed individual variation in results in rooks, including dominance, neophobia, past experiences, and individual idiosyncrasies, are examined. Rooks, like other corvids, possess well-developed OP abilities, and these results support the idea that exertion of executive control is required to avoid \"A-not-B\" errors, rather than caching abilities or developmental age, as previously suggested.</p>","PeriodicalId":49914,"journal":{"name":"Learning & Behavior","volume":" ","pages":"93-113"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11880163/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142127174","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Learning & BehaviorPub Date : 2025-03-01Epub Date: 2024-10-22DOI: 10.3758/s13420-024-00655-y
Sydney F Hope, Kaitlyn R Willgohs, Sangpa Dittakul, Joshua M Plotnik
{"title":"Do elephants really never forget? What we know about elephant memory and a call for further investigation.","authors":"Sydney F Hope, Kaitlyn R Willgohs, Sangpa Dittakul, Joshua M Plotnik","doi":"10.3758/s13420-024-00655-y","DOIUrl":"10.3758/s13420-024-00655-y","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Despite popular culture's promotion of the elephant's ability to \"never forget,\" there is remarkably limited empirical research on the memory capacities of any living elephant species (Asian, Elephas maximus; African savanna, Loxodonta africana; African forest, Loxodonta cyclotis). A growing body of literature on elephant cognition and behavioral ecology has provided insight into the elephant's ability to behave flexibly in changing physical and social environments, but little direct evidence of how memory might relate to this flexibility exists. In this paper, we review and discuss the potential relationships between what we know about elephant cognition and behavior and the elephants' memory for the world around them as they navigate their physical, social, and spatial environments. We also discuss future directions for investigating elephant memory and implications for such research on elephant conservation and human-elephant conflict mitigation.</p>","PeriodicalId":49914,"journal":{"name":"Learning & Behavior","volume":" ","pages":"44-64"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142511972","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Learning & BehaviorPub Date : 2025-03-01Epub Date: 2024-03-11DOI: 10.3758/s13420-024-00627-2
Marisa Hoeschele
{"title":"Iterative learning experiments can help elucidate music's origins.","authors":"Marisa Hoeschele","doi":"10.3758/s13420-024-00627-2","DOIUrl":"10.3758/s13420-024-00627-2","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Anglada-Tort et al. Current Biology, 33, 1472-1486.e12, (2023) conducted a large-scale iterative learning study with cross-cultural human participants to understand how musical structure emerges. Together with archaeological, developmental, historical cross-cultural music data, and cross-species studies we can begin to elucidate the origins of music.</p>","PeriodicalId":49914,"journal":{"name":"Learning & Behavior","volume":" ","pages":"1-2"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140102712","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Que Anh Pham, Gladys Ayson, Cristina M Atance, Tashauna L Blankenship
{"title":"Correction: Measuring spontaneous episodic future thinking in children: Challenges and opportunities.","authors":"Que Anh Pham, Gladys Ayson, Cristina M Atance, Tashauna L Blankenship","doi":"10.3758/s13420-024-00650-3","DOIUrl":"10.3758/s13420-024-00650-3","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":49914,"journal":{"name":"Learning & Behavior","volume":" ","pages":"92"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142331248","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Learning & BehaviorPub Date : 2025-03-01Epub Date: 2025-01-08DOI: 10.3758/s13420-024-00665-w
Ella Worsfold, Nicola S Clayton, Lucy G Cheke
{"title":"Revisiting episodic-like memory in scrub jays: Is there more we can still learn from what-where-when caching behaviour?","authors":"Ella Worsfold, Nicola S Clayton, Lucy G Cheke","doi":"10.3758/s13420-024-00665-w","DOIUrl":"10.3758/s13420-024-00665-w","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Professor Nicola Clayton is perhaps best known for her work on food-caching scrub jays. Her seminal 1998 paper, together with Anthony Dickinson, showed that scrub jays could remember what food they had cached, where and how long ago, suggesting memory ability that is 'episodic-like' in nature. Here, we present data from a previously unpublished study that sought to replicate and extend these findings. The results replicate previous findings and address potential alternative explanations for earlier results. We argue that the controlled behavioural analyses introduced in this study have the potential to add nuance to our understanding of memory in scrub jay cache retrieval, and to inspire new studies exploring this phenomenon, about which we still have so much to learn.</p>","PeriodicalId":49914,"journal":{"name":"Learning & Behavior","volume":" ","pages":"65-79"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11880068/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142958025","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Learning & BehaviorPub Date : 2025-03-01Epub Date: 2025-02-18DOI: 10.3758/s13420-025-00666-3
Elias Garcia-Pelegrin, Rachael Miller, Joshua M Plotnik, Alexandra K Schnell
{"title":"A special issue in honor of the contributions of Professor Nicola S. Clayton FRS.","authors":"Elias Garcia-Pelegrin, Rachael Miller, Joshua M Plotnik, Alexandra K Schnell","doi":"10.3758/s13420-025-00666-3","DOIUrl":"10.3758/s13420-025-00666-3","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>It has been an honor to edit this special issue of Learning & Behavior to recognize the exceptional contributions of Prof. Nicky S. Clayton FRS to the fields of comparative cognition and developmental and experimental psychology. Prof. Clayton has also provided supervision, mentorship, and support for many students, researchers, and colleagues throughout her career, including over 52 PhD candidates and postdoctoral researchers, helping to pave the way for a generation of future scientists in academia and industry. Indeed, all four of the co-editors on this special issue worked with Prof. Clayton in her Cambridge University Comparative Cognition Lab as PhD candidates and/or postdoctoral researchers (from 2011 to 2022), and we happily continue to collaborate together. Prof. Clayton was awarded the 2024 Comparative Cognition Society (CCS) Research Award and delivered the Master Lecture at the 31st International Conference on Comparative Cognition (CO3, April 2024). Dr. Rachael Miller and Prof. Joshua Plotnik (co-editors) co-organized a symposium at the CO3 conference dedicated to Prof. Clayton. The invited symposium speakers were Prof. Mike Beran (Georgia State University), Prof. Jon Crystal (Indiana University), Dr. Christelle Jozet-Alves (Université de Caen Normandie), and Prof. Thomas Bugnyar (University of Vienna). Dr Elias Garcia-Pelegrin (co-editor) served as Master of Ceremony for an evening CO3 banquet, which included a video compilation of \"thank you\" messages from many of Prof. Clayton's colleagues, students, and friends.</p>","PeriodicalId":49914,"journal":{"name":"Learning & Behavior","volume":" ","pages":"7-10"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143450674","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}