- 1Department
of Psychology and Center for Brain, Biology and Behavior, University of
Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, USA; Center for Adaptive Behavior and
Cognition, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany.
- 2Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany; Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.
- 3Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany; Department of Psychology, Syracuse University, New York, NY, USA.
- 4School of Human Evolution and Social Change, and Institute of Human Origins , Arizona State University , Tempe, AZ , USA.
Abstract
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.
KEYWORDS:
chimpanzees; comparative cognition; forgetting; memory; rational analysis; social contact
