Are monkeys able to plan for future exchange?

Whether or not non-human animals can plan for the future is a hotly debated issue. We investigate this question further and use a planning-to-exchange task to study future planning in the cooperative domain in two species of monkeys: the brown capuchin (Cebus apella) and the Tonkean macaque (Macaca tonkeana). The rationale required subjects to plan for a future opportunity to exchange tokens for food by collecting tokens several minutes in advance. Subjects who successfully planned for the exchange task were expected to select suitable tokens during a collection period (5/10?min), save them for a fixed period of time (20/30?min), then take them into an adjacent compartment and exchange them for food with an experimenter. Monkeys mostly failed to transport tokens when entering the testing compartment; hence, they do not seem able to plan for a future exchange with a human partner. Three subjects did however manage to solve the task several times, albeit at very low rates. They brought the correct version of three possible token types, but rarely transported more than one suitable token at a time. Given that the frequency of token manipulation predicted transport, success might have occurred by chance. This was not the case, however, since in most cases subjects were not already holding the token in their hands before they entered the testing compartment. Instead, these results may reflect subjects' strengths and weaknesses in their time-related comprehension of the task.     

Acoustic communication in crocodilians: information encoding and species specificity of juvenile calls

In the Crocodylia order, all species are known for their ability to produce sounds in several communication contexts. Though recent experimental studies have brought evidence of the important biological role of young crocodilian calls, especially at hatching time, the juvenile vocal repertoire still needs to be clarified in order to describe thoroughly the crocodilian acoustic communication channel. The goal of this study is to investigate the acoustic features (structure and information coding) in the contact call of juveniles from three different species (Nile crocodile Crocodylus niloticus, Black caiman, Melanosuchus niger and Spectacled caiman, Caiman crocodilus). We have shown that even though substantial structural differences exist between the calls of different species, they do not seem relevant for crocodilians. Indeed, juveniles and adults from the species studied use a similar and non-species-specific way of encoding information, which relies on frequency modulation parameters. Interestingly, using conditioning experiments, we demonstrated that this tolerance in responses to signals of different acoustic structures was unlikely to be related to a lack of discriminatory abilities. This result reinforced the idea that crocodilians have developed adaptations to use sounds efficiently for communication needs.     

Gestalt compositionality and instruction-based meaning construction

We would like to propose a new model of meaning construction based on language comprehension considered as a dynamic process during which the meaning of each linguistic unit and the global meaning of the sentence are determined simultaneously. This model, which may be called “gestalt compositionality,” is radically opposed to the classic compositional mechanism advocated by linguistic formalism based on the primacy of syntax. The process considers the syntactic structure of an utterance as the product of meaning construction rather than its source. The comprehension of an utterance is consequently directly based on the interaction between the different basic components of this utterance: lexical units, grammatical markers, positional relations between units, and more generally, basic “constructions” in the sense of Construction Grammar. Thus, meaning is really the result of a gestalt compositional process insomuch as the contribution of each basic component depends on the contribution of the other components present in the utterance. We show a first attempt at modeling from French and English examples.     

Do (un)certainty appraisal tendencies reverse the influence of emotions on risk taking in sequential tasks?

According to the Appraisal-Tendency Framework (Han, Lerner, & Keltner, 2007), certainty-associated emotions increase risk taking compared with uncertainty-associated emotions. To date, this general effect has only been shown in static judgement and decision-making paradigms; therefore, the present study tested the effect of certainty on risk taking in a sequential decision-making task. We hypothesised that the effect would be reversed due to the kind of processing involved, as certainty is considered to encourage heuristic processing that takes into account the emotional cues arising from previous decisions, whereas uncertainty leads to more systematic processing. One hundred and one female participants were induced to feel one of three emotions (film clips) before performing a decision-making task involving risk (Game of Dice Task; Brand et al., 2005). As expected, the angry and happy participants (certainty-associated emotions) were more likely than the fearful participants (uncertainty-associated emotion) to make safe decisions (vs. risky decisions).     

The role of the input on the development of the LC bias: A crosslinguistic comparison

Previous studies have described the existence of a phonotactic bias called the Labial–Coronal (LC) bias, corresponding to a tendency to produce more words beginning with a labial consonant followed by a coronal consonant (i.e. “bat”) than the opposite CL pattern (i.e. “tap”). This bias has initially been interpreted in terms of articulatory constraints of the human speech production system. However, more recently, it has been suggested that this presumably language-general LC bias in production might be accompanied by LC and CL biases in perception, acquired in infancy on the basis of the properties of the linguistic input. The present study investigates the origins of these perceptual biases, testing infants learning Japanese, a language that has been claimed to possess more CL than LC sequences, and comparing them with infants learning French, a language showing a clear LC bias in its lexicon. First, a corpus analysis of Japanese IDS and ADS revealed the existence of an overall LC bias, except for plosive sequences in ADS, which show a CL bias across counts. Second, speech preference experiments showed a perceptual preference for CL over LC plosive sequences (all recorded by a Japanese speaker) in 13- but not in 7- and 10-month-old Japanese-learning infants (Experiment 1), while revealing the emergence of an LC preference between 7 and 10 months in French-learning infants, using the exact same stimuli. These crosslinguistic behavioral differences, obtained with the same stimuli, thus reflect differences in processing in two populations of infants, which can be linked to differences in the properties of the lexicons of their respective native languages. These findings establish that the emergence of a CL/LC bias is related to exposure to a linguistic input.     

A modular,computer-controlled system for olfactory stimulation in the MRI environment

Although the cerebral networks involved in sensory perception are of general interest in neuroscience, registration of the effects of olfactory stimulation, especially in a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) environment, presents particular problems and constraints. This article presents details of a reliable and portable system for olfactory stimulation that is modular in design and based on microcontroller technology. It has the following characteristics: (1)?It is under software control; (2)?the presentation of olfactory stimulation can be synchronized with respiration; (3)?it can be manually controlled; and (4)?it is fully compatible with an MRI environment. The principle underlying this system is to direct an odor to the subject’s nostrils by switching airflow to different odor diffusers. The characteristics of this system were established using (1)?ultraviolet (UV) spectroscopy, to measure its response time, and (2)?gas chromatography, to measure the repeatability of odor presentation in terms of gas concentration. A response time of 200?± 25 ms was obtained for the system, and the standard deviations of the gas concentration delivered during stimulation ranged from 1.5% to 22%, depending on the odor, the airflow, and the dilution of the odor used. Since it is portable, controlled by software, and reliable, on the basis of the results we obtained, this system will lend itself to a wide range of applications in olfactory neuroscience.     

Long-tailed macaques display unexpected waiting abilities in exchange tasks

The ability of animals to delay gratification is crucial for complex goal-directed action. It may help them in making effective decisions when facing a choice. We tested the ability of nine long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis) to delay gratification in several experiments. In exchange tasks, subjects had to keep a small piece of cookie before returning it to an experimenter in order to get a larger food amount. Results showed that animals could wait between 10 s and 10 min depending on individual and sizes of reward. In another experiment, subjects could immediately give back the initial piece of cookie then wait for the return. Their performances more than doubled, demonstrating the role of consumption inhibition in postponing gratification. Such achievements underscore delays of gratification which until now were not thought possible in monkeys. Finally, subjects were presented with an accumulation of food pieces added at short intervals until they seized them. They mostly waited between 30 s and 1 min, which points at the consistency of our data, compared to those of other studies. Our results indicate that long-tailed macaques anticipated the duration of delays. We may account for their remarkable performances by their achievements in the social context.     

Mother–Calf vocal communication in Atlantic walrus: a first field experimental study

In all colonial pinnipeds studied, mother–young vocal recognition exists and allows rapid and reliable meetings in spite of the confusing environment of the breeding colony. The efficiency of this recognition process guarantees pup survival, especially in species where females alternate foraging sea trips and lactation periods on land. The Atlantic Walrus (Odobenus rosmarus rosmarus) is a highly gregarious pinniped with females attending their calves for an extended period of time (2–3 years). Although we expect mother–calf vocal recognition to occur in this species due to the high density of individuals packed in herds, it has never been experimentally demonstrated. Here, we assessed the individual stereotypy of both mother and calf barks recorded in the wild by measuring frequency and temporal acoustic parameters. Both discriminant function and artificial neural network analyses resulted in high correct classification rates, underlying a well-defined individual stereotypy in parameters related to frequency modulation and frequency values. Playback experiments showed that mothers were more responsive to the barks of their own calf than to those of unrelated young. Finally, propagation experiments revealed that barks propagate at greater distances over water surface than over ice, acoustic features such as frequency modulation and frequency spectrum being highly resistant to degradation during propagation. Thus, acoustic analysis and propagation experiments suggest that these frequency parameters might be the key acoustic features involved in the individual identification process. This experimental study clearly demonstrates that Atlantic walrus has developed a highly reliable mother–calf vocal communication allowing such strong social bond.     

Some Theoretical Considerations on Attitude,Arousal and Affect during Cognitive Dissonance

This article provides a general overview of cognitive dissonance research with the induced compliance paradigm. We begin by describiang how dissonance affects individuals' attitude change and address issues related to measurement of attitude. Next, we describe the arousal component of dissonance, how it has been measured and the issues that have been raised about its nature. Finally, we explore the emotional component of dissonance and review different ways for measuring and identifying the negative affect associated to dissonance. We conclude by claiming that a more intensive study of the process of dissonance, and particularly of its arousal and emotional components, will allow a more in‐depth understanding of the mental processes involved in cognitive dissonance.     

Can the uncertainty appraisal associated with emotion cancel the effect of the hunch period in the Iowa Gambling Task?

Research has given little attention to the influence of incidental emotions on the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), in which processing of the emotional cues associated with each decision is necessary to make advantageous decisions. Drawing on cognitive theories of emotions, we tested whether uncertainty-associated emotion can cancel the positive effect of the hunch period, by preventing participants from developing a tendency towards advantageous decisions. Our explanation is that uncertainty appraisals initiate deliberative processing that is irrelevant to process emotional cues, contrary to intuitive processing (Kahneman, 2003; Tiedens & Linton, 2001). As expected, uncertainty-associated emotion cancelled the positive effect of the hunch period in the IGT compared to certainty-associated emotion: disgusted participants (certainty-associated emotion) and sad participants induced to feel certainty developed a stronger tendency towards advantageous decisions than sad participants induced to feel uncertainty. We discuss the importance of the core components that trigger incidental emotions to predict decision making.