3/24/2023 0 Comments Jay antzer![]() We found no evidence that the fish solved the TI task by value transfer. Eleven of 12 subjects chose the predicted outcome for TI in the first test trial and five subjects performed with 100% accuracy in six successive test trials. We used an associative learning paradigm where the fish received a food reward when correctly solving a colour discrimination task. Here we tested whether the cooperatively breeding cichlid Neolamprologus pulcher can infer transitive relationships between artificial stimuli in a non-social context. ![]() Therefore, if TI is domain-general in fish, social fish should also be able to use TI in non-social tasks. If cognitive processes are domain-general, animals should use abilities evolved in a social context also in a non-social context. ![]() Social cichlids can use TI in a social setting where observers assess dominance status after witnessing contests between different dyads of conspecifics. Transitive inference (TI) describes the ability to infer relationships between stimuli that have never been seen together before. Together, these findings provided empirical evidences for the relationship between head volume and the ability of novel skill learning, and also provide a non-invasive method for studying the relationship between cognitive ability and head volume in other bird species. Finally, head volume, relative head volume and age was not associated with spatial performance in the spatial memory tasks. Age, sex, and exploratory tendency of individuals were not related to learning performance or learning speed. Second, individuals with larger head volume relative to their tarsus (relative head volume) learned the novel skill faster. First, we found that chestnut thrushes with larger head volume were more likely to learn the novel skill than individuals with smaller head volume. Here, we used two experiments (novel skill learning task and spatial memory task) to examine whether head volume (proxy for brain size) could predict the learning performance and spatial performance in wild chestnut thrushes (Turdus rubrocanus). However, it remains largely unexplored whether larger-brained birds perform better in learning and spatial memory tests. Recent comparative studies on fish and mammals have suggested that brain size is associated with cognitive ability, such as problem solving and self-control larger-brained individuals are assumed to have better cognitive ability. These findings corroborate the significance of brain size for cognitive evolution. Our results also suggest that a larger brain becomes especially advantageous with increasing cognitive complexity. Large-brained individuals are hence cognitively more flexible, which probably yields fitness benefits, as they may adapt more quickly to social and/or ecological cognitive challenges. We found that large-brained females outperformed small-brained females in the reversed-learning part of the test but not in the colour discrimination part of the test. In a standard reversal-learning test we first investigated basic learning ability with a colour discrimination test, then reversed the reward contingency to specifically test for cognitive flexibility. To test this hypothesis, we assessed the performance of brain size selected female guppies (Poecilia reticulata) in two distinct aspects of cognition that differ in cognitive complexity. We therefore hypothesize that a larger brain is especially beneficial for distinct and gradually more complex aspects of cognition. Recent evidence suggests that some more basic forms of cognition, for instance colour vision, are not influenced by brain size. Yet not all of the numerous aspects of cognition seem to be affected by brain size. It has become increasingly clear that a larger brain can confer cognitive benefits.
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