Abstract
Individuals exhibit consistent differences in behaviour and related
cognitive performance. ‘Cognitive styles’-based hypotheses suggest the
trade-off between speed and accuracy is an important factor where an
individual's behavioural traits and linked decision speeds may account
for its cognitive performance. The expected relationship between
accuracy and decision speed, however, is not always clear and some
studies have suggested that faster individuals do not suffer the
expected cost to accuracy. Contradictory findings may be attributed to
taxon-specific differences but may also be due to the difficulty in
separating intraindividual from interindividual variation or the use of
insufficiently challenging tasks in tests. We trained archerfish, Toxotes chatareus,
to shoot at artificial targets for food, and then conducted a visual
discrimination study to test the cognitive styles hypothesis. To reduce
potential confounding effects, we used a longitudinal design, and
increased the challenge of the test by using differentially rewarded
targets. We also tested fish in one of two conditions with either two or
three targets in each test. As expected, archerfish showed repeatable
differences in latency to shoot and consistently fast individuals were
quicker to achieve initial learning criteria than slower individuals.
Repeated tests revealed an inverse relationship between discrimination
accuracy and speed, with slower individuals having greater accuracy in
initial trials on each day, supporting the cognitive styles hypothesis.
However, this relationship was statistically significant only in the
three-target condition, underscoring how task design can strongly affect
the ability of researchers to detect robust individual variation in
cognition. Taken together, our results support the hypothesis that
speed–accuracy trade-offs can underlie some observed interindividual
differences in cognition.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1-14 |
Number of pages | 14 |
Journal | Animal Behaviour |
Volume | 160 |
Early online date | 24 Dec 2019 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Feb 2020 |
Keywords
- Behavioural variation
- Cognition
- Cognitive styles
- Discrimination
- Speed–accuracy trade-offs
- Toxotes chatareus