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Humans share the ability to intuitively map ‘sharp’ or ‘round’ pseudowords, such as ‘bouba’ versus ‘kiki’, to abstract edgy versus round shapes, respectively. This effect, known as sound symbolism, appears early in human development. The phylogenetic origin of this phenomenon, however, is unclear: are humans the only species capable of experiencing correspondences between speech sounds and shapes, or could similar effects be observed in other animals? Thus far, evidence from an implicit matching experiment failed to find evidence of this sound symbolic matching in great apes, suggesting its human uniqueness. However, explicit tests of sound symbolism have never been conducted with nonhuman great apes. In the present study, a language-competent bonobo completed a cross-modal matching-to-sample task in which he was asked to match spoken English words to pictures, as well as ‘sharp’ or ‘round’ pseudowords to shapes. Sound symbolic trials were interspersed among English words. The bonobo matched English words to pictures with high accuracy, but did not show any evidence of spontaneous sound symbolic matching. Our results suggest that speech exposure/comprehension alone cannot explain sound symbolism. This lends plausibility to the hypothesis that biological differences between human and nonhuman primates could account for the putative human specificity of this effect.

On the basis of evolutionary and behavioral biology, neuroscience and anthropology, this book investigates to which extent it is possible to reconstruct the evolution of nervous systems and brains as well as of mental-cognitive abilities, in short \"intelligence\", and to which extent we can correlate the one with the other. One central question is, whether or not abilities exist that make humans truly unique, or whether the evolution of the human mind was a gradual process. Exactly which neural features make animals and humans intelligent and creative? Is it absolute or relative brain size or the size of \"intelligence centers\" inside the brains, the number of nerve cells inside the brain in total or in such \"intelligence centers\" decisive for the degree of intelligence, of mind and eventually consciousness? Which are the driving forces behind these processes? Here, many different answers exist. For some experts the driving force for brains and minds are the conditions for biological survival: the more complex these conditions, the more effective need to be sense organs, nervous systems and brains, and the stronger is the tendency to an increase in learning abilities, behavioral flexibility and innovation power of animals. This is the ecological intelligence hypothesis. Other authors believe that the true driving force is the challenge from social life of an animal: the more complex the social conditions, the more sophisticated are abilities such as social learning, imitation, empathy, knowledge transfer, consciousness and the development of a theory of mind and meta-cognition. This, again, needs progressive changes inside the brains. This is the social intelligence hypothesis. Again other authors distinguish physical intelligence as a third form of cognitive functions mostly related to tool use, tool fabrication and understanding of the principles of how things work. Finally, some experts believe that the decisive factor in the evolution of brains and minds consisted in an increase in the speed and efficacy of information processing in cognitive brain centers. This is the general intelligence or information processing hypothesis. It is discussed, which of these hypotheses is the most convincing one. At its end, the book deals with the eminent question of whether we can arrive at a naturalistic concept of mind and consciousness. Is it possible to explain mind and intelligence within the framework of the natural science, or do mind and intelligence as found in humans, transcend nature? -- Back cover.

Magnitude information is essential to create a representation of the external environment and successfully interact with it. Duration and numerosity, for example, can shape our predictions and bias each other (i.e. the greater the number of people queuing, the longer we expect to wait). While these biases suggest the existence of a generalized magnitude system, asymmetric effects (i.e. numerosity affecting duration but not vice versa) challenged this idea. Here, we propose that such asymmetric integration depends on the stimuli used and the neural processing dynamics they entail. Across multiple behavioural experiments employing different stimulus presentation displays (static versus dynamic) and experimental manipulations known to bias numerosity and duration perceptions (i.e. connectedness and multisensory integration), we show that the integration between numerosity and time can be symmetrical if the stimuli entail a similar neural time-course and numerosity unfolds over time. Overall, these findings support the idea of a generalized magnitude system, but also highlight the role of early sensory processing in magnitude representation and integration.

An \"exciting and engaging\" investigation (Jonah Berger) of the secret, tangled emotional relationships people have with things--drawing on cutting-edge findings from the fields of psychology, neuroscience, and marketing. Books, baseball cards, ceramic figurines, art, iPhones, clothing, cars, music, dolls, furniture, and even nature itself. If you're like most people, at some point in your life you've found yourself indulging in a love affair with some thing that brings you immense joy, comfort, or fulfillment. Why is it that we so often feel intense passion for objects? What does this tendency tell us about ourselves and our society? In The Things We Love, Dr. Aaron Ahuvia presents astonishing discoveries that prove we are far less \"rational\" than we think when it comes to our possessions and hobbies. In fact, we have passionate relationships with the things we love, and these relationships are driven by influences deep within our culture and our biology. Some of our passions are sudden, obsessive, and fleeting; others are devoted and lifelong affairs. Some turn dark: we become hoarders, or would prefer to destroy certain objects rather than let anyone else own them. And as technology improves, becoming increasingly addictive, one wonders: might our lives become so dominated by our emotional ties to things that we lose interest in other people? Packed with fascinating case studies, scientific analysis, and takeaways for living in a modern and ever-so-material world, The Things We Love offers a truly original and insightful look into our love for inanimate objects--and how better understanding these relationships can enrich and improve our lives.

Riots are unpredictable and dangerous. Our understanding of the factors that cause riots is based on correlational observations of population data, or post hoc introspection of individuals. To complement these accounts, we developed innovative experimental techniques, investigated the psychological factors of rioting and explored their consequences with agent-based simulations. We created a game, ‘Parklife’, that physically co-present participants played using smartphones. In two teams, participants tapped on their screen to grow trees and flowerbeds on separate but adjacent virtual parks. Participants could also tap to vandalize the other team’s park. In some conditions, we surreptitiously introduced inequity between the teams so that one (the disadvantaged team) had to tap more for each reward. The experience of inequity caused the disadvantaged team to engage in more destruction, and to report higher relative deprivation and frustration. Agent-based models suggested that acts of destruction were driven by the interaction between individual level of frustration and the team’s behaviour. Our results provide insights into the psychological mechanisms underlying collective action.

Episodic memory, remembering past experiences based on unique what–where–when components, declines during ageing in humans, as does episodic-like memory in non-human mammals. By contrast, semantic memory, remembering learnt knowledge without recalling unique what–where–when features, remains relatively intact with advancing age. The age-related decline in episodic memory likely stems from the deteriorating function of the hippocampus in the brain. Whether episodic memory can deteriorate with age in species that lack a hippocampus is unknown. Cuttlefish are molluscs that lack a hippocampus. We test both semantic-like and episodic-like memory in sub-adults and aged-adults nearing senescence (n = 6 per cohort). In the semantic-like memory task, cuttlefish had to learn that the location of a food resource was dependent on the time of day. Performance, measured as proportion of correct trials, was comparable across age groups. In the episodic-like memory task, cuttlefish had to solve a foraging task by retrieving what–where–when information about a past event with unique spatio-temporal features. In this task, performance was comparable across age groups; however, aged-adults reached the success criterion (8/10 correct choices in consecutive trials) significantly faster than sub-adults. Contrary to other animals, episodic-like memory is preserved in aged cuttlefish, suggesting that memory deterioration is delayed in this species.

Grouping sets of elements into smaller, equal-sized, subsets constitutes a perceptual strategy employed by humans and other animals to enhance cognitive performance. Here, we show that day-old chicks can solve extremely complex numerical discriminations (Exp.1), and that their performance can be enhanced by the presence of symmetrical/asymmetrical colour grouping (Exp.2 versus Exp.3). Newborn chicks were habituated for 1 h to even numerosities (sets of elements presented on a screen) and then tested for their spontaneous choice among what for humans would be considered a prime and a non-prime odd numerosity. Chicks discriminated and preferred the prime over the composite set of elements irrespective of its relative magnitude (i.e. 7 versus 9 and 11 versus 9). We discuss this result in terms of novelty preference. By employing a more complex contrast (i.e. 13 versus 15), we investigated the limits of such a mechanism and showed that induced grouping positively affects chicks’ performance. Our results suggest the existence of a spontaneous mechanism that enables chicks to create symmetrical (i.e. same-sized) subgroups of sets of elements. Chicks preferentially inspected numerosities for which same-sized grouping is never possible (i.e. the prime numerosity) rather than numerosities allowing for symmetrical grouping (i.e. composite).

Formation of long-term pair-bonds is a complex process, involving multiple neural circuits and is context- and experience-dependent. While laboratory studies using prairie voles have identified the involvement of several neural mechanisms, efforts to translate these findings into predictable field outcomes have been inconsistent at best. Here we test the hypothesis that inhibition of oestrogen receptor alpha (ERα) in the medial amygdala of male prairie voles would significantly increase the expression of social monogamy in the field. Prairie vole populations of equal sex ratio were established in outdoor enclosures with males bred for high levels of ERα expression and low levels of prosocial behaviour associated with social monogamy. Medial amygdala ERα expression was knocked down in half the males per population. Knockdown males displayed a greater degree of social monogamy in five of the eight behavioural indices assessed. This study demonstrates the robust nature of ERα in playing a critical role in the expression of male social monogamy in a field setting.

The ability to infer unseen causes from evidence is argued to emerge early in development and to be uniquely human. We explored whether preschoolers and capuchin monkeys could locate a reward based on the physical traces left following a hidden event. Preschoolers and capuchin monkeys were presented with two cups covered with foil. Behind a barrier, an experimenter (E) punctured the foil coverings one at a time, revealing the cups with one cover broken after the first event and both covers broken after the second. One event involved hiding a reward, the other event was performed with a stick (order counterbalanced). Preschoolers and, with additional experience, monkeys could connect the traces to the objects used in the puncturing events to find the reward. Reversing the order of events perturbed the performance of 3-year olds and capuchins, while 4-year-old children performed above chance when the order of events was reversed from the first trial. Capuchins performed significantly better on the ripped foil task than they did on an arbitrary test in which the covers were not ripped but rather replaced with a differently patterned cover. We conclude that by 4 years of age children spontaneously reason backwards from evidence to deduce its cause.