Cargando…
Symbol-value association and discrimination in the archerfish
One of the most important aspects of mathematical cognition in humans is the ability to symbolically represent magnitudes and quantities. In the last 20 years it has been shown that not only humans but also other primates, birds and dolphins can use symbolic representation of quantities. However, it...
Autores principales: | , , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2017
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5381781/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28379988 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0174044 |
_version_ | 1782519990959734784 |
---|---|
author | Karoubi, Naomi Leibovich, Tali Segev, Ronen |
author_facet | Karoubi, Naomi Leibovich, Tali Segev, Ronen |
author_sort | Karoubi, Naomi |
collection | PubMed |
description | One of the most important aspects of mathematical cognition in humans is the ability to symbolically represent magnitudes and quantities. In the last 20 years it has been shown that not only humans but also other primates, birds and dolphins can use symbolic representation of quantities. However, it remains unclear to what extent this ability is spread across the animal kingdom. Here, by training archerfish to associate variable amounts of rewards with different geometric shapes, we show for the first time that lower vertebrates can also associate a value with a symbol and make a decision that maximizes their food intake based on this information. In addition, the archerfish is able to understand up to four different quantities and organize them mentally in an ordinal manner, similar to observations in higher vertebrates. These findings point in the direction of the existence of an approximate magnitude system in fish. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5381781 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2017 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-53817812017-04-19 Symbol-value association and discrimination in the archerfish Karoubi, Naomi Leibovich, Tali Segev, Ronen PLoS One Research Article One of the most important aspects of mathematical cognition in humans is the ability to symbolically represent magnitudes and quantities. In the last 20 years it has been shown that not only humans but also other primates, birds and dolphins can use symbolic representation of quantities. However, it remains unclear to what extent this ability is spread across the animal kingdom. Here, by training archerfish to associate variable amounts of rewards with different geometric shapes, we show for the first time that lower vertebrates can also associate a value with a symbol and make a decision that maximizes their food intake based on this information. In addition, the archerfish is able to understand up to four different quantities and organize them mentally in an ordinal manner, similar to observations in higher vertebrates. These findings point in the direction of the existence of an approximate magnitude system in fish. Public Library of Science 2017-04-05 /pmc/articles/PMC5381781/ /pubmed/28379988 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0174044 Text en © 2017 Karoubi et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Karoubi, Naomi Leibovich, Tali Segev, Ronen Symbol-value association and discrimination in the archerfish |
title | Symbol-value association and discrimination in the archerfish |
title_full | Symbol-value association and discrimination in the archerfish |
title_fullStr | Symbol-value association and discrimination in the archerfish |
title_full_unstemmed | Symbol-value association and discrimination in the archerfish |
title_short | Symbol-value association and discrimination in the archerfish |
title_sort | symbol-value association and discrimination in the archerfish |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5381781/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28379988 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0174044 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT karoubinaomi symbolvalueassociationanddiscriminationinthearcherfish AT leibovichtali symbolvalueassociationanddiscriminationinthearcherfish AT segevronen symbolvalueassociationanddiscriminationinthearcherfish |