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Adaptive behavior requires that organisms learn not only which stimuli tend to co-occur (e.g., whether stimulus A co-occurs with unpleasant stimulus B) but also how co-occurring stimuli are related (e.g., whether A starts or stops B). In a preregistered study ( N = 200 adults), we investigated whether sleep would promote adaptive evaluative choices requiring joint memories for stimulus co-occurrences and stimulus relations. Participants learned about hypothetical pharmaceutical products that either cause or prevent positive or negative health conditions, followed by measures of evaluative choices and explicit memory. After a 12-hr retention interval including either nocturnal sleep or daytime wake, participants completed the same measures a second time. Results showed that sleep strengthened the impact of causal product–condition relations on choices (revealed by multinomial modeling analyses) and enhanced memories for specific stimulus co-occurrences (revealed by memory preservation analyses). The findings suggest that sleep promotes adaptive evaluative choices via offline memory consolidation.
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Paper wasps form abstract concept of ‘same and different’
Concept formation requires animals to learn and use abstract rules that transcend the characteristics of specific stimuli. Abstract concepts are often associated with high levels of cognitive sophistication, so there has been much interest in which species can form and use concepts. A key abstract concept is that of sameness and difference, where stimuli are classified as eitherthe same asordifferent thanan original stimulus. Here, we used a simultaneous two-item same-different task to test whether paper wasps (Polistes fuscatus)can learn and apply a same-different concept. We trained wasps by simultaneously presenting pairs ofsameordifferentstimuli (e.g. colours). Then, we tested whether wasps could apply the concept to new stimuli of the same type (e.g. new colours) and to new stimulus types (e.g. odours). We show that wasps learned a general concept ofsamenessordifferenceand applied it to new samples and types of stimuli. Notably, wasps were able to transfer the learned rules to new stimuli in a different sensory modality. Therefore,P. fuscatuscan classify stimuli based on their relationships and apply abstract concepts to novel stimulus types. These results indicate that abstract concept learning may be more widespread than previously thought.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2134910
- PAR ID:
- 10491365
- Publisher / Repository:
- Proceedings B
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
- Volume:
- 289
- Issue:
- 1979
- ISSN:
- 0962-8452
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2022.1156
