Dataset Information

Western scrub-jays do not appear to attend to functionality in Aesop's Fable experiments.

ABSTRACT: Western scrub-jays are known for their highly discriminatory and flexible behaviors in a caching (food storing) context. However, it is unknown whether their cognitive abilities are restricted to a caching context. To explore this question, we tested scrub-jays in a non-caching context using the Aesop's Fable paradigm, where a partially filled tube of water contains a floating food reward and objects must be inserted to displace the water and bring the food within reach. We tested four birds, but only two learned to drop stones proficiently. Of these, one bird participated in 4/5 experiments and one in 2/5 experiments. Both birds passed one experiment, but without attending to the functional differences of the objects, and failed the other experiments. Scrub-jays were not motivated to participate in these experiments, suggesting that either this paradigm was ecologically irrelevant or perhaps their flexibility is restricted to a caching context.

SUBMITTER: Logan CJ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4768697 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Western scrub-jays do not appear to attend to functionality in Aesop's Fable experiments.

Logan Corina J CJ Harvey Brigit D BD Schlinger Barney A BA Rensel Michelle M

PeerJ 20160223

Western scrub-jays are known for their highly discriminatory and flexible behaviors in a caching (food storing) context. However, it is unknown whether their cognitive abilities are restricted to a caching context. To explore this question, we tested scrub-jays in a non-caching context using the Aesop's Fable paradigm, where a partially filled tube of water contains a floating food reward and objects must be inserted to displace the water and bring the food within reach. We tested four birds, bu ...[more]

PMID: 26925331

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Project description:Investigation of tool-using behaviours has long been a means by which to explore causal reasoning in children and nonhuman animals. Much of the recent research has focused on the "Aesop's Fable" paradigm, in which objects must be dropped into water to bring a floating reward within reach. An underlying problem with these, as with many causal reasoning studies, is that functionality information and reward history are confounded: a tool that is functionally useful is also rewarded, while a tool that is not functionally useful is not rewarded. It is therefore not possible to distinguish between behaviours motivated by functional understanding of the properties of the objects involved, and those influenced by reward-history. Here, we devised an adapted version of the Aesop's Fable paradigm which decouples functionality information and reward history by making use of situations in which the use of a particular tool should have enabled a subject to obtain (or not obtain) a reward, but the outcome was affected by the context. Children aged 4-11 were given experience of a range of tools that varied independently in whether they were functional or non-functional and rewarded or non-rewarded. They were then given the opportunity to choose which tools they would like to use in a test trial, thereby providing an assessment of whether they relied on information about functionality or the reward history associated with the object or a combination of the two. Children never significantly used reward history to drive their choices of tools, while the influence of functionality information increased with age, becoming dominant by age 7. However, not all children behaved in a consistent manner, and even by 10 years of age, only around a third exclusively used functionality as a basis for their decision-making. These findings suggest that from around the age of 7-years, children begin to emphasize functionality information when learning in novel situations, even if competing reward information is available, but that even in the oldest age-group, most children did not exclusively use functionality information.

Project description:BACKGROUND:Haldane's Rule, the tendency for the heterogametic sex to show reduced fertility in hybrid crosses, can obscure the signal of gene flow in mtDNA between species where females are heterogametic. Therefore, it is important when studying speciation and species limits in female-heterogametic species like birds to assess the signature of gene flow in the nuclear genome as well. We studied introgression of microsatellites and mtDNA across a secondary contact zone between coastal and interior lineages of Western Scrub-Jays (Aphelocoma californica) to test for a signature of Haldane's Rule: a narrower cline of introgression in mtDNA compared to nuclear markers. RESULTS:Our initial phylogeographic analysis revealed that there is only one major area of contact between coastal and interior lineages and identified five genetic clusters with strong spatial structuring: Pacific Slope, Interior US, Edwards Plateau (Texas), Northern Mexico, and Southern Mexico. Consistent with predictions from Haldane's Rule, mtDNA showed a narrower cline than nuclear markers across a transect through the hybrid zone. This result is not being driven by female-biased dispersal because neutral diffusion analysis, which included estimates of sex-specific dispersal rates, also showed less diffusion of mtDNA. Lineage-specific plumage traits were associated with nuclear genetic profiles for individuals in the hybrid zone, indicating that these differences are under genetic control. CONCLUSIONS:This study adds to a growing list of studies that support predictions of Haldane's Rule using cline analysis of multiple loci of differing inheritance modes, although alternate hypotheses like selection on different mtDNA types cannot be ruled out. That Haldane's Rule appears to be operating in this system suggests a measure of reproductive isolation between the Pacific Slope and interior lineages. Based on a variety of evidence from the phenotype, ecology, and genetics, we recommend elevating three lineages to species level: A. californica (Pacific Slope); A. woodhouseii (Interior US plus Edwards Plateau plus Northern Mexico); A. sumichrasti (Southern Mexico). The distinctive Edwards Plateau population in Texas, which was monophyletic in mtDNA except for one individual, should be studied in greater detail given habitat threat.

Project description:Aesop's Fable tasks-in which subjects drop objects into a water-filled tube to raise the water level and obtain out-of-reach floating rewards -have been used to test for causal understanding of water displacement in both young children and non-human animals. However, a number of alternative explanations for success on these tasks have yet to be ruled out. One hypothesis is that subjects may respond to perceptual-motor feedback: repeating those actions that bring the reward incrementally closer. Here, we devised a novel, forced-choice version of the Aesop's Fable task to assess whether subjects can solve water displacement tasks when this type of feedback is removed. Subjects had to select only one set of objects, or one type of tube, into which all objects were dropped at once, and the effect the objects had on the water level was visually concealed. In the current experiment, fifty-five 5-9 year old children were tested in six different conditions in which we either varied object properties (floating vs. sinking, hollow vs. solid, large vs. small and too large vs. small objects), the water level (high vs. low) and/or the tube size (narrow vs. wide). We found that children aged 8-9 years old were able to solve most of the water displacement tasks on their first trial, without any opportunity for feedback, suggesting that they mentally simulated the results of their actions before making a choice. Children aged 5-7 years solved two conditions on their first trial (large vs. small objects and high- vs. low-water levels), and learnt to solve most of the remaining conditions over five trials. The developmental pattern shown here is comparable to previous studies using the standard Aesop's Fable task, where eight year olds are typically successful from their first trial and 5-7 year olds learn to pass over five trials. Thus, our results indicate that children do not depend on perceptual-motor feedback to solve these water displacement tasks. The forced-choice paradigm we describe could be used comparatively to test whether or not non-human animals require visual feedback to solve water displacement tasks.

Dataset Information

Western scrub-jays do not appear to attend to functionality in Aesop's Fable experiments.

Publications

Western scrub-jays do not appear to attend to functionality in Aesop's Fable experiments.

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