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

Logan, Corina J.; Harvey, Brigit D; Schlinger, Barney A.; Rensel, Michelle A.

doi:10.7717/peerj.1707

Cited by 25 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Others argue that these conclusions are premature and that empirical evidence is required to support or contradict such claims [2]. The Aesop’s Fable paradigm has been used to test causal understanding in various avian species, namely rooks, Corvus frugilegus [3], Eurasian jays, Garrulus glandarius [4], New Caledonian crows, Corvus moneduloides [5–7], great-tailed grackles, Quiscalus mexicanus [8] and Californian scrub-jays, Aphelocoma californica [9] (formerly known as Western scrub-jays), as well as human children [10]. …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Across all subjects, crows, jays and grackles inserted significantly more sinking than floating objects across the first 5 trials and onwards, though they did not typically do this from their very first trial [4–6]. The only species to fail the Aesop’s Fable tasks so far is the Californian scrub-jays with no significant preferences for sinking over floating objects found across 20 trials [9]. In a solid vs. hollow object choice task, New Caledonian crows preferred to insert significantly more solid than hollow objects into a water-filled tube (across 20 trials: 95% in [6]; 89% in [5]).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Performance in Object-Choice Aesop’s Fable Tasks Are Influenced by Object Biases in New Caledonian Crows but not in Human Children

et al. 2016

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The ability to reason about causality underlies key aspects of human cognition, but the extent to which non-humans understand causality is still largely unknown. The Aesop’s Fable paradigm, where objects are inserted into water-filled tubes to obtain out-of-reach rewards, has been used to test casual reasoning in birds and children. However, success on these tasks may be influenced by other factors, specifically, object preferences present prior to testing or arising during pre-test stone-dropping training. Here, we assessed this ‘object-bias’ hypothesis by giving New Caledonian crows and 5–10 year old children two object-choice Aesop’s Fable experiments: sinking vs. floating objects, and solid vs. hollow objects. Before each test, we assessed subjects’ object preferences and/or trained them to prefer the alternative object. Both crows and children showed pre-test object preferences, suggesting that birds in previous Aesop’s Fable studies may also have had initial preferences for objects that proved to be functional on test. After training to prefer the non-functional object, crows, but not children, performed more poorly on these two object-choice Aesop’s Fable tasks than subjects in previous studies. Crows dropped the non-functional objects into the tube on their first trials, indicating that, unlike many children, they do not appear to have an a priori understanding of water displacement. Alternatively, issues with inhibition could explain their performance. The crows did, however, learn to solve the tasks over time. We tested crows further to determine whether their eventual success was based on learning about the functional properties of the objects, or associating dropping the functional object with reward. Crows inserted significantly more rewarded, non-functional objects than non-rewarded, functional objects. These findings suggest that the ability of New Caledonian crows to produce performances rivaling those of young children on object-choice Aesop’s Fable tasks is partly due to pre-existing object preferences.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Performance in Object-Choice Aesop’s Fable Tasks Are Influenced by Object Biases in New Caledonian Crows but not in Human Children

et al. 2016

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“…In further support of the suggestion that this task is difficult for birds to learn is that only one bird has spontaneously solved the object-dropping task in a previous study (one New Caledonian crow; Mioduszewska, Auersperg & Von Bayern, 2015), without any demonstrations or training. Additionally, birds, including corvids, typically require a relatively large number of training trials to learn to solve this task, indicating that it is fairly difficult to learn even with explicit training (e.g., 90–275 trials in the present experiment; 135–362 trials in great-tailed grackles: Logan, 2016; 76–255 trials in California scrub-jays: Logan et al, 2016b—though note that definitions for reaching proficiency differ between these studies and the current experiment).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 61%

“…Further, if the birds did not use social information to solve the task, we tested whether there was any evidence that they had attended to the demonstrator (as indicated by differences between groups with differing levels of social learning opportunities), and what they might have learned during this exposure. The object-dropping task has been used previously during pre-test training for Aesop’s Fable tasks in this species (Cheke, Bird & Clayton, 2011) as well as in a number of other bird species (rooks: Bird & Emery, 2009a; New Caledonian crows: Jelbert et al, 2014; Logan et al, 2014; California scrub-jays, Logan et al, 2016b; great-tailed grackles, Quiscalus mexicanus , Logan, 2016). Aesop’s Fable tasks require subjects to insert objects into water-filled tubes to obtain out-of-reach floating rewards.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Eurasian jays do not copy the choices of conspecifics, but they do show evidence of stimulus enhancement

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et al. 2016

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Corvids (birds in the crow family) are hypothesised to have a general cognitive tool-kit because they show a wide range of transferrable skills across social, physical and temporal tasks, despite differences in socioecology. However, it is unknown whether relatively asocial corvids differ from social corvids in their use of social information in the context of copying the choices of others, because only one such test has been conducted in a relatively asocial corvid. We investigated whether relatively asocial Eurasian jays (Garrulus glandarius) use social information (i.e., information made available by others). Previous studies have indicated that jays attend to social context in their caching and mate provisioning behaviour; however, it is unknown whether jays copy the choices of others. We tested the jays in two different tasks varying in difficulty, where social corvid species have demonstrated social information use in both tasks. Firstly, an object-dropping task was conducted requiring objects to be dropped down a tube to release a food reward from a collapsible platform, which corvids can learn through explicit training. Only one rook and one New Caledonian crow have learned the task using social information from a demonstrator. Secondly, we tested the birds on a simple colour discrimination task, which should be easy to solve, because it has been shown that corvids can make colour discriminations. Using the same colour discrimination task in a previous study, all common ravens and carrion crows copied the demonstrator. After observing a conspecific demonstrator, none of the jays solved the object-dropping task, though all jays were subsequently able to learn to solve the task in a non-social situation through explicit training, and jays chose the demonstrated colour at chance levels. Our results suggest that social and relatively asocial corvids differ in social information use, indicating that relatively asocial species may have secondarily lost this ability due to lack of selection pressure from an asocial environment.

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“…These articles are Bird and Emery (2009b), Cheke et al (2011), Jelbert et al (2014), Logan et al (2014), and Taylor et al (2011). Application of the second criterion excluded an article by Logan et al (2015) that tested two western scrub jays (in addition, these birds did not demonstrate reliable learning in the water displacement task). Application of the third criteria excluded an article by Logan (2016) that tested six grackles.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Meta-analytic techniques reveal that corvid causal reasoning in the Aesop’s Fable paradigm is driven by trial-and-error learning

et al. 2018

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The classic Aesop’s fable, Crow and the Pitcher, has inspired a major line of research in comparative cognition. Over the past several years, five articles (over 32 experiments) have examined the ability of corvids (e.g., rooks, crows, and jays) to complete lab-based analogs of this fable, by requiring them to drop stones and other objects into tubes of water to retrieve a floating worm (Bird and Emery in Curr Biol 19:1–5, 2009b; Cheke et al. in Anim Cogn 14:441–455, 2011; Jelbert et al. in PLoS One 3:e92895, 2014; Logan et al. in PLoS One 7:e103049, 2014; Taylor et al. in Gray R D 12:e26887, 2011). These researchers have stressed the unique potential of this paradigm for understanding causal reasoning in corvids. Ghirlanda and Lind (Anim Behav 123:239–247, 2017) re-evaluated trial-level data from these studies and concluded that initial preferences for functional objects, combined with trial-and-error learning, may account for subjects’ performance on key variants of the paradigm. In the present paper, we use meta-analytic techniques to provide more precise information about the rate and mode of learning that occurs within and across tasks. Within tasks, subjects learned from successful (but not unsuccessful) actions, indicating that higher-order reasoning about phenomena such as mass, volume, and displacement is unlikely to be involved. Lurthermore, subjects did not transfer information learned in one task to subsequent tasks, suggesting that corvids do not engage with these tasks as variants of the same problem (i.e., how to generate water displacement to retrieve a floating worm). Our methodological analysis and empirical findings raise the question: Can Aesop’s fable studies distinguish between trial-and-error learning and/or higher-order causal reasoning? We conclude they cannot.

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

Cited by 25 publications

References 26 publications

Performance in Object-Choice Aesop’s Fable Tasks Are Influenced by Object Biases in New Caledonian Crows but not in Human Children

Performance in Object-Choice Aesop’s Fable Tasks Are Influenced by Object Biases in New Caledonian Crows but not in Human Children

Eurasian jays do not copy the choices of conspecifics, but they do show evidence of stimulus enhancement

Meta-analytic techniques reveal that corvid causal reasoning in the Aesop’s Fable paradigm is driven by trial-and-error learning

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