Animal Cognition - November 2018

'''Hennefield, L., Hwang, H. G., Weston, S. J., & Povinelli, D. J. (2018). Meta-analytic techniques reveal that corvid causal reasoning in the Aesop’s Fable paradigm is driven by trial-and-error learning. Animal Cognition, 21''(6), 735–748. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-018-1206-y ' '

A meta-analysis of studies looking at corvids ability to drop objects into a water-filled tube to reach a floating worm. The authors looked at whether the data from these studies provided clear evidence for causal reasoning versus trial-and-error problem solving techniques. A previous meta-analysis looked at studies on a trial by trial basis: reporting corvid’s success due to initial preferences for successful objects (i.e. large over small stones or sinking over floating objects) and learning across trials. But in this analysis, the authors looked at each individual drop of an object within trials instead of the overall trial. Here, there was little evidence for an initial preference of successful objects or tubes containing either water or sand and there was some evidence for significant rates of learning across object insertions. For example, birds were more likely to return to a tube filled with water after dropping something in it, but this learning effect was not present for tubes filled with sand. Overall, the subjects were learning from successful, but not unsuccessful actions. Finally, they did not find a transfer of learning from one task to subsequent tasks (the rate of learning did not increase with experience). Overall, the studies investigated in this analysis are unable to distinguish between trial-and-error and causal reasoning based on their results.

'''Xiong, W., Yi, L.-C., Tang, Z., Zhao, X., & Fu, S.-J. (2018). Quantity discrimination in fish species: fish use non-numerical continuous quantity traits to select shoals. Animal Cognition, 21(6), 813–820. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-018-1214-y'''

Several species of fish discriminate/select shoals by a non-numerical continuous trait (cumulative surface area of shoal) and not by discrete cues (number of members at shoal).

'''Humphrey, B., Helton, W. S., Bedoya, C., Dolev, Y., & Nelson, X. J. (2018). Psychophysical investigation of vigilance decrement in jumping spiders: overstimulation or understimulation? Animal Cognition, 21(6), 787–794. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-018-1210-2'''

This study looked at whether there was a decrease in vigilance in jumping spiders dependent on the difficulty of the given task. Spiders were shown stimuli on 2 monitors and given a little ball to hold on to (which I personally think is adorable) as a way for the experimenters to measure their movements towards a moving stimulus on the screens. Stimuli were either presented as high or low clutter as well as high or low contrast. Spiders were tested in either a hungry or sated state. There was a weak evidence that hunger and the amount of clutter impacted spiders’ vigilance, and that the effect of stimulus salience (contrast) was more consistent. There was a steeper decrement in vigilance in the ‘harder’ task (low contrast, high clutter), consistent with human studies that more demanding tasks make it more difficult to sustain attention/vigilance.

'''Zoratto, F., Cordeschi, G., Grignani, G., Bonanni, R., Alleva, E., Nascetti, G., … Carere, C. (2018). Variability in the “stereotyped” prey capture sequence of male cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis) could relate to personality differences. Animal Cognition, 21(6), 773–785. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-018-1209-8 '''

For anyone who might be interested in personality/individual differences. This one looked at differences in a prey capture technique (a relatively consistent behavior) in male cuttlefish and whether these differences were associated with personality differences.

'''Stuebing, S. L., Marshall, A. T., Triplett, A., & Kirkpatrick, K. (2018). Females in the forefront: time-based intervention effects on impulsive choice and interval timing in female rats. Animal Cognition, 21''(6), 759–772. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-018-1208-9 ' '

Here is a paper coming from the lab Travis is now at! Looking at how a temporal intervention mitigates impulsive choice behavior. Previous research had shown that these interventions attenuated impulsive choice in male rats and this paper was investigating the effect in female rats. The impulsive choice task required rats to choose between a smaller sooner (SS) and larger later (LL) reward. The temporal intervention consisted of trials in which a pellet was delivered after a 10s delay on the SS lever or a 30s delay on the LL lever (the equivalent of forced-choice trials from the choice task and no free-choice or peak trials). After the intervention the rats were given the impulsive choice task again. The intervention improved timing accuracy but not timing precision and increased long responses at the shorter durations. Overall, impulsive choice behaviors can be reduced via temporal interventions in both male and female rats.