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Investigating animal cognition with the Aesop's Fable paradigm: Current understanding and future directions
The Aesop's Fable paradigm – in which subjects drop stones into tubes of water to obtain floating out-of-reach rewards – has been used to assess causal understanding in rooks, crows, jays and human children. To date, the performance of corvids suggests that they can recognize the functional pro...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Taylor & Francis
2015
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4594378/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26478777 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19420889.2015.1035846 |
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author | Jelbert, Sarah A Taylor, Alex H Gray, Russell D |
author_facet | Jelbert, Sarah A Taylor, Alex H Gray, Russell D |
author_sort | Jelbert, Sarah A |
collection | PubMed |
description | The Aesop's Fable paradigm – in which subjects drop stones into tubes of water to obtain floating out-of-reach rewards – has been used to assess causal understanding in rooks, crows, jays and human children. To date, the performance of corvids suggests that they can recognize the functional properties of a variety of objects including size, weight and solidity, and they seem to be more capable of learning from causal information than arbitrary information. However, 2 alternative explanations for their performance have yet to be ruled out. The perceptual-motor feedback hypothesis suggests that subjects may attend solely to the movement of the reward, repeating actions which bring the reward closer, while the object-bias hypothesis suggests that subjects could pass certain tasks by preferring to handle objects that resemble natural stones. Here we review our current understanding of performance on the Aesop's Fable tasks, and suggest that studies controlling for feedback and object preferences will help us determine exactly what animals understand about the cause and effect of water displacement. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4594378 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2015 |
publisher | Taylor & Francis |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-45943782015-10-16 Investigating animal cognition with the Aesop's Fable paradigm: Current understanding and future directions Jelbert, Sarah A Taylor, Alex H Gray, Russell D Commun Integr Biol Short Communication The Aesop's Fable paradigm – in which subjects drop stones into tubes of water to obtain floating out-of-reach rewards – has been used to assess causal understanding in rooks, crows, jays and human children. To date, the performance of corvids suggests that they can recognize the functional properties of a variety of objects including size, weight and solidity, and they seem to be more capable of learning from causal information than arbitrary information. However, 2 alternative explanations for their performance have yet to be ruled out. The perceptual-motor feedback hypothesis suggests that subjects may attend solely to the movement of the reward, repeating actions which bring the reward closer, while the object-bias hypothesis suggests that subjects could pass certain tasks by preferring to handle objects that resemble natural stones. Here we review our current understanding of performance on the Aesop's Fable tasks, and suggest that studies controlling for feedback and object preferences will help us determine exactly what animals understand about the cause and effect of water displacement. Taylor & Francis 2015-08-31 /pmc/articles/PMC4594378/ /pubmed/26478777 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19420889.2015.1035846 Text en Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The moral rights of the named author(s) have been asserted. |
spellingShingle | Short Communication Jelbert, Sarah A Taylor, Alex H Gray, Russell D Investigating animal cognition with the Aesop's Fable paradigm: Current understanding and future directions |
title | Investigating animal cognition with the Aesop's Fable paradigm: Current understanding and future directions |
title_full | Investigating animal cognition with the Aesop's Fable paradigm: Current understanding and future directions |
title_fullStr | Investigating animal cognition with the Aesop's Fable paradigm: Current understanding and future directions |
title_full_unstemmed | Investigating animal cognition with the Aesop's Fable paradigm: Current understanding and future directions |
title_short | Investigating animal cognition with the Aesop's Fable paradigm: Current understanding and future directions |
title_sort | investigating animal cognition with the aesop's fable paradigm: current understanding and future directions |
topic | Short Communication |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4594378/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26478777 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19420889.2015.1035846 |
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