Unknown

Dataset Information

0

Fish can infer relations between colour cues in a non-social learning task.


ABSTRACT: Transitive inference (TI) describes the ability to infer relationships between stimuli that have never been seen together before. Social cichlids can use TI in a social setting where observers assess dominance status after witnessing contests between different dyads of conspecifics. If cognitive processes are domain-general, animals should use abilities evolved in a social context also 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. Here we tested whether the cooperatively breeding cichlid Neolamprologus pulcher can infer transitive relationships between artificial stimuli in a non-social context. We used an associative learning paradigm where the fish received a food reward when correctly solving a colour discrimination task. 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 found no evidence that the fish solved the TI task by value transfer. Our findings show that fish also use TI in non-social tasks with artificial stimuli, thus generalizing past results reported in a social context and hinting toward a domain-general cognitive mechanism.

SUBMITTER: La Loggia O 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9667135 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

altmetric image

Publications

Fish can infer relations between colour cues in a non-social learning task.

La Loggia Océane O   Rüfenacht Angélique A   Taborsky Barbara B  

Biology letters 20221116 11


Transitive inference (TI) describes the ability to infer relationships between stimuli that have never been seen together before. Social cichlids can use TI in a social setting where observers assess dominance status after witnessing contests between different dyads of conspecifics. If cognitive processes are domain-general, animals should use abilities evolved in a social context also in a non-social context. Therefore, if TI is domain-general in fish, social fish should also be able to use TI  ...[more]

Similar Datasets

| S-EPMC6023868 | biostudies-literature
| S-EPMC7031672 | biostudies-literature
| S-EPMC10219979 | biostudies-literature
| S-EPMC6227855 | biostudies-literature
| S-EPMC10932586 | biostudies-literature
| S-EPMC11522516 | biostudies-literature
| S-EPMC7445250 | biostudies-literature
| S-EPMC10123028 | biostudies-literature
2022-04-28 | GSE201766 | GEO
| S-EPMC3735258 | biostudies-literature