Affective forecasting in Parkinson's disease.

OBJECTIVES: While emotional responses experienced in-the-moment appear to remain intact in Parkinson's disease (PD), no study has tested whether this extends to the prediction of future emotional responses. The present study aimed to provide the first assessment of affective forecasting capacity in this cohort. METHODS: A positively and negatively valenced affective forecasting task and broader clinical battery were completed by a PD group (ns = 28 and 37, respectively) and a demographically matched neurotypical control group (ns = 38 and 39, respectively). RESULTS: No group differences emerged on the two tasks, with the two groups underestimating their level of happiness and overestimating their level of negative affect to a similar degree. Affective forecasting error scores were unrelated to clinical characteristics. CONCLUSIONS: Given that affective forecasting relies on self-projection into the future, a skill shown to often be disrupted in this cohort, impairments were expected. However, this study provides initial evidence that this may not be the case. These findings are potentially important given that how we think about and envisage the future affectively is a major determinant of goal-directed behavior. Further work is now needed to establish whether these findings are robust and generalize to other types of affective stimuli.

Counterfactual choices and moral judgments in children.

When making moral judgments of past actions, adults often think counterfactually about what could have been done differently. Considerable evidence suggests that counterfactual thinking emerges around age 6, but it remains unknown how this development influences children's moral judgments. Across two studies, Australian children aged 4-9 (N = 236, 142 Females) were told stories about two characters who had a choice that led to a good or bad outcome, and two characters who had no choice over a good or bad outcome. Results showed that 4- and 5-year-olds' moral judgments were influenced only by the actual outcome. From age 6, children's moral judgments were also influenced by the counterfactual choices that had been available to the characters.

Young children spontaneously devise an optimal external solution to a cognitive problem.

Metacognition plays an essential role in adults' cognitive offloading decisions. Despite possessing basic metacognitive capacities, however, preschool-aged children often fail to offload effectively. Here, we introduced 3- to 5-year-olds to a novel search task in which they were unlikely to perform optimally across trials without setting external reminders about the location of a target. Children watched as an experimenter first hid a target in one of three identical opaque containers. The containers were then shuffled out of view before children had to guess where the target was hidden. In the test phase, children could perform perfectly by simply placing a marker in a transparent jar attached to the target container prior to shuffling, and then later selecting the marked container. Children of all ages used this external strategy above chance levels if they had seen it demonstrated to them, but only the 4- and 5-year-olds independently devised the strategy to improve their future performance. These results suggest that, when necessary for optimal performance, even 4- and 5-year-olds can use metacognitive knowledge about their own future uncertainty to deploy effective external solutions.

Do Monkeys and Young Children Understand Exclusive "Or" Relations? A Commentary on Ferrigno et al. (2021).

Ferrigno et al. (2021) claim to provide evidence that monkeys can reason through the disjunctive syllogism (given A or B, not A, therefore B) and conclude that monkeys therefore understand logical "or" relations. Yet their data fail to provide evidence that the baboons they tested understood the exclusive "or" relations in the experimental task. For two mutually exclusive possibilities-A or B-the monkeys appeared to infer that B was true when A was shown to be false, but they failed to infer that B was false when A was shown to be true. In our own research, we recently found an identical response pattern in 2.5- to 4-year-old children, whereas 5-year-olds demonstrated that they could make both inferences. The monkeys' and younger children's responses are instead consistent with an incorrect understanding of A and B as having an inclusive "or" relation. Only the older children provided compelling evidence of representing the exclusive "or" relation between A and B.

Mobile containers in human cognitive evolution studies: Understudied and underrepresented.

Mobile carrying devices-slings, bags, boxes, containers, etc.-are a ubiquitous tool form among recent human communities. So ingrained are they to our present lifeways that the fundamental relationship between mobile containers and foresight is easily overlooked, resulting in their significance in the study of human cognitive development being largely unrecognized. Exactly when this game-changing innovation appeared and became an essential component of the human toolkit is currently unknown. Taphonomic processes are obviously a significant factor in this situation; however, we argue that these devices have also not received the attention that they deserve from human evolution researchers. Here we discuss what the current archeological evidence is for Pleistocene-aged mobile containers and outline the various lines of evidence that they provide for the origins and development of human cognitive and cultural behavior.

Individual differences in neonatal "imitation" fail to predict early social cognitive behaviour.

The influential hypothesis that humans imitate from birth - and that this capacity is foundational to social cognition - is currently being challenged from several angles. Most prominently, the largest and most comprehensive longitudinal study of neonatal imitation to date failed to find evidence that neonates copied any of nine actions at any of four time points (Oostenbroek et al., [2016] Current Biology, 26, 1334-1338). The authors of an alternative and statistically liberal post-hoc analysis of these same data (Meltzoff et al., [2017] Developmental Science, 21, e12609), however, concluded that the infants actually did imitate one of the nine actions: tongue protrusion. In line with the original intentions of this longitudinal study, we here report on whether individual differences in neonatal "imitation" predict later-developing social cognitive behaviours. We measured a variety of social cognitive behaviours in a subset of the original sample of infants (N = 71) during the first 18 months: object-directed imitation, joint attention, synchronous imitation and mirror self-recognition. Results show that, even using the liberal operationalization, individual scores for neonatal "imitation" of tongue protrusion failed to predict any of the later-developing social cognitive behaviours. The average Spearman correlation was close to zero, mean rs  = 0.027, 95% CI [-0.020, 0.075], with all Bonferroni adjusted p values > .999. These results run counter to Meltzoff et al.'s rebuttal, and to the existence of a "like me" mechanism in neonates that is foundational to human social cognition.

Preparation for certain and uncertain future outcomes in young children and three species of monkey.

This study examined 3-year old children and monkeys' capacities to prepare for immediate future events. In Study 1, children were presented with several tube apparatuses with two exits. When targets were certain to emerge from both, children tended to prepare to catch them by covering each exit. When it was uncertain where targets would emerge, however, they tended to prepare for only one possibility. These results substantiate the claim that simultaneous preparation for mutually exclusive possibilities develops relatively late. Study 2 found no evidence for such a capacity in monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi, Cebus apella, Papio hamadryas) given the same tasks.

Young Children From Three Diverse Cultures Spontaneously and Consistently Prepare for Alternative Future Possibilities.

This study examined future-oriented behavior in children (3-6 years; N = 193) from three diverse societies-one industrialized Western city and two small, geographically isolated communities. Children had the opportunity to prepare for two alternative versions of an immediate future event over six trials. Some 3-year-olds from all cultures demonstrated competence, and a majority of the oldest children from each culture prepared for both future possibilities on every trial. Although there were some cultural differences in the youngest age groups that approached ceiling performance, the overall results indicate that children across these communities become able to prepare for alternative futures during early childhood. This acquisition period is therefore not contingent on Western upbringing, and may instead indicate normal cognitive maturation.

Thinking about thinking about time.

Hoerl & McCormack (H&M) discuss the possible function of meta-representations in temporal cognition but ultimately take an agnostic stance. Here we outline the fundamental role that we believe meta-representations play. Because humans know that their representations of future events are just representations, they are in a position to compensate for the shortcomings of their own foresight and to prepare for multiple contingencies.

Practicing for the Future: Deliberate Practice in Early Childhood.

Deliberate practice is essential for acquiring a wide range of skills that have been central to humans' adaptive success, yet little is known about when and how children develop this capability. The current study examined 4- to 7-year-olds' (N = 120) ability to selectively practice a skill that would be useful in the near future, as well as their broader understanding of the role of deliberate practice in skill acquisition. Six- and 7-year-olds demonstrated both an explicit understanding of deliberate practice and the capacity to practice without being prompted. Five-year-olds showed an understanding of deliberate practice and some capacity to practice, whereas 4-year-olds showed neither of these capabilities. Findings reveal important developments in children's future-directed behavior beyond the preschool years.

Misconceptions about adaptive function.

Mahr & Csibra (M&C) fail to make the important distinction between why a trait originally evolved, why it was maintained over time, and what its current utility is. Here we point out that episodic memory may have originally evolved as a by-product of a general metarepresentational capacity, and that it may have current functions beyond the communicative domain.

Preparatory responses to socially determined, mutually exclusive possibilities in chimpanzees and children.

The capacity to imagine and prepare for alternative future possibilities is central to human cognition. Recent research suggests that between age 2 and 4 children gradually begin to demonstrate a capacity to prepare for two simple, mutually exclusive alternatives of an immediate future event. When children were given the opportunity to catch a target an experimenter dropped into an inverted Y-shaped tube, 2-year olds-as well as great apes-tended to cover only one of the exits, whereas 4-year-olds spontaneously and consistently prepared for both possible outcomes. Here we gave children, age 2 to 4 years, and chimpanzees a different opportunity to demonstrate potential competence. Given that social behaviour is particularly full of uncertainty, we developed a version of the task where the outcome was still unpredictable yet obviously controlled by an experimenter. Participants could ensure they would catch the target by simply covering two tube exits. While 4-year-olds demonstrated competence, chimpanzees and the younger children instead tended to cover only one exit. These results substantiate the conclusion that the capacity for simultaneous preparation for mutually exclusive event outcomes develops relatively late in children and they are also in line with the possibility that our close animal relatives lack this capacity.

Thinking about threats: Memory and prospection in human threat management.

Humans have evolved mechanisms for the detection and management of possible threats in order to abate their negative consequences for fitness. Internally generated ('detached') cognition may have evolved in part because of its contributions to this broad function, but important questions remain about its role in threat management. In this article, we therefore present a taxonomy of threat-related internally generated cognition comprising episodic and semantic formats of memory and prospection. We address the proximate mechanisms of each of the capacities in this taxonomy, and discuss their respective contributions to adaptive threat management in humans. For instance, mental time travel empowers people to contemplate and learn from threats experienced long ago, as well as to plan for dangers that might arise in the distant future. However, despite their functional benefits, these thought processes are also central to contemporary anxiety disorders and may be a potent source of distress.

Affective forecasting bias in preschool children.

Adults are capable of predicting their emotional reactions to possible future events. Nevertheless, they systematically overestimate the intensity of their future emotional reactions relative to how they feel when these events actually occur. The developmental origin of this "intensity bias" has not yet been examined. Two studies were conducted to test the intensity bias in preschool children. In the first study, 5-year-olds (N=30) predicted how they would feel if they won or lost various games. Comparisons with subsequent self-reported feelings indicated that participants overestimated how sad they would feel to lose the games but did not overestimate their happiness from winning. The second study replicated this effect in another sample of 5-year-olds (n=34) and also found evidence of an intensity bias in 4-year-olds (n=30). These findings provide the first evidence of a negative intensity bias in affective forecasting among young children.

Using foresight to prioritise the present.

Planning for the future may encourage apparently "impulsive" behaviour when the future is anticipated to be bleak. Thus, a seeming failure of self-control in reactive violence could be caused not by a disinclination to plan ahead, but by virtue of this ability. Furthermore, we point to empirical and theoretical shortcomings in the authors' case, such as a failure to distinguish proximate and ultimate explanations.

There is no compelling evidence that human neonates imitate.

Keven & Akins (K&A) propose that neonatal "imitation" is a function of newborns' spontaneous oral stereotypies and should be viewed within the context of normal aerodigestive development. Their proposal is in line with the result of our recent large longitudinal study that found no compelling evidence for neonatal imitation. Together, these works prompt reconsideration of the developmental origin of genuine imitation.

Disentangling the effect of event-based cues on children's time-based prospective memory performance.

Previous time-based prospective memory research, both with children and with other groups, has measured the ability to perform an action with the arrival of a time-dependent yet still event-based cue (e.g., the occurrence of a specific clock pattern) while also engaged in an ongoing activity. Here we introduce a novel means of operationalizing time-based prospective memory and assess children's growing capacities when the availability of an event-based cue is varied. Preschoolers aged 3, 4, and 5years (N=72) were required to ring a bell when a familiar 1-min sand timer had completed a cycle under four conditions. In a 2×2 within-participants design, the timer was either visible or hidden and was either presented in the context of a single task or embedded within a dual picture-naming task. Children were more likely to ring the bell before 2min had elapsed in the visible-timer and single-task conditions, with performance improving with age across all conditions. These results suggest a divergence in the development of time-based prospective memory in the presence versus absence of event-based cues, and they also suggest that performance on typical time-based tasks may be partly driven by event-based prospective memory.

Episodic foresight and anxiety: Proximate and ultimate perspectives.

OBJECTIVE: In this paper, we examine the relationship between episodic foresight and anxiety from an evolutionary perspective, proposing that together they confer an advantage for modifying present moment decision-making and behaviour in the light of potential future threats to fitness. METHODS: We review the body of literature on the role of episodic foresight in anxiety, from both proximate and ultimate perspectives. RESULTS: We propose that anxious feelings associated with episodic simulation of possible threat-related future events serve to imbue these simulations with motivational currency. Episodic and semantic details of a future threat may be insufficient for motivating its avoidance, but anxiety associated with a simulation can provoke adaptive threat management. As such, we detail how anxiety triggered by a self-generated, threat-related future simulation prepares the individual to manage that threat (in terms of its likelihood and/or consequences) over greater temporal distances than observed in other animals. We then outline how anxiety subtypes may represent specific mechanisms for predicting and managing particular classes of fitness threats. CONCLUSIONS: This approach offers an inroad for understanding the nature of characteristic future thinking patterns in anxiety disorders and serves to illustrate the adaptive function of the mechanism from which clinical anxiety deviates.

Episodic foresight and schizophrenia.

OBJECTIVE: People with schizophrenia have difficulty engaging in specific future-directed thoughts and behaviours, such as generating phenomenological characteristics of future events (a component of episodic foresight), and executing directed preparatory behaviours (a component of prospective memory). However, it remains unclear whether they also exhibit difficulties using episodic foresight to appropriately guide future-directed behaviours. METHOD: People with schizophrenia and non-clinical controls were administered a behavioural measure that met strict criteria for assessing episodic foresight. In keeping with our focus on the functional application of foresight, this measure required participants to identify a problem, self-generate a resolution, and execute the appropriate future-directed intention. RESULTS: Relative to controls, people with schizophrenia were less likely to spontaneously acquire items that would later allow a problem to be solved, and were also less likely to subsequently use these items to solve the problems. There was no interaction between group and task, indicating that these two components of foresight were disrupted to an equivalent degree. In the clinical (but not the control) group, item acquisition and item use were correlated with general cognitive capacity. No significant associations with clinical variables emerged. CONCLUSION: The capacity to apply episodic foresight in a functionally adaptive way is disrupted in schizophrenia and may at least partially reflect broader cognitive dysfunction. Future work is now needed to clarify the implications of these difficulties in everyday life, as well as how these difficulties might be remediated. PRACTITIONER POINTS: People with schizophrenia have known difficulties with episodic foresight, and it now appears that those difficulties extend to the performance of foresightful preparatory behaviours. Because preparatory behaviours are central to routine and adaptive planning, difficulties with episodic foresight may contribute to or be a result of some of the functional difficulties experienced by people with schizophrenia. Further research is needed to determine whether interventions might be developed for people with reduced episodic foresight. Interventions may include the use of remedial tools that support and encourage the performance of foresightful behaviour, or cognitive training programs that actively improve the ability and propensity to exercise foresight independently.