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Are parrots poor at motor self-regulation or is the cylinder task poor at measuring it?

The ability to inhibit unproductive motor responses triggered by salient stimuli is a fundamental inhibitory skill. Such motor self-regulation is thought to underlie more complex cognitive mechanisms, like self-control. Recently, a large-scale study, comparing 36 species, found that absolute brain s...

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Autores principales: Kabadayi, Can, Krasheninnikova, Anastasia, O’Neill, Laurie, van de Weijer, Joost, Osvath, Mathias, von Bayern, Auguste M. P.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5640728/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28929247
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10071-017-1131-5
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author Kabadayi, Can
Krasheninnikova, Anastasia
O’Neill, Laurie
van de Weijer, Joost
Osvath, Mathias
von Bayern, Auguste M. P.
author_facet Kabadayi, Can
Krasheninnikova, Anastasia
O’Neill, Laurie
van de Weijer, Joost
Osvath, Mathias
von Bayern, Auguste M. P.
author_sort Kabadayi, Can
collection PubMed
description The ability to inhibit unproductive motor responses triggered by salient stimuli is a fundamental inhibitory skill. Such motor self-regulation is thought to underlie more complex cognitive mechanisms, like self-control. Recently, a large-scale study, comparing 36 species, found that absolute brain size best predicted competence in motor inhibition, with great apes as the best performers. This was challenged when three Corvus species (corvids) were found to parallel great apes despite having much smaller absolute brain sizes. However, new analyses suggest that it is the number of pallial neurons, and not absolute brain size per se, that correlates with levels of motor inhibition. Both studies used the cylinder task, a detour-reaching test where food is presented behind a transparent barrier. We tested four species from the order Psittaciformes (parrots) on this task. Like corvids, many parrots have relatively large brains, high numbers of pallial neurons, and solve challenging cognitive tasks. Nonetheless, parrots performed markedly worse than the Corvus species in the cylinder task and exhibited strong learning effects in performance and response times. Our results suggest either that parrots are poor at controlling their motor impulses, and hence that pallial neuronal numbers do not always correlate with such skills, or that the widely used cylinder task may not be a good measure of motor inhibition. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10071-017-1131-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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spelling pubmed-56407282017-10-26 Are parrots poor at motor self-regulation or is the cylinder task poor at measuring it? Kabadayi, Can Krasheninnikova, Anastasia O’Neill, Laurie van de Weijer, Joost Osvath, Mathias von Bayern, Auguste M. P. Anim Cogn Original Paper The ability to inhibit unproductive motor responses triggered by salient stimuli is a fundamental inhibitory skill. Such motor self-regulation is thought to underlie more complex cognitive mechanisms, like self-control. Recently, a large-scale study, comparing 36 species, found that absolute brain size best predicted competence in motor inhibition, with great apes as the best performers. This was challenged when three Corvus species (corvids) were found to parallel great apes despite having much smaller absolute brain sizes. However, new analyses suggest that it is the number of pallial neurons, and not absolute brain size per se, that correlates with levels of motor inhibition. Both studies used the cylinder task, a detour-reaching test where food is presented behind a transparent barrier. We tested four species from the order Psittaciformes (parrots) on this task. Like corvids, many parrots have relatively large brains, high numbers of pallial neurons, and solve challenging cognitive tasks. Nonetheless, parrots performed markedly worse than the Corvus species in the cylinder task and exhibited strong learning effects in performance and response times. Our results suggest either that parrots are poor at controlling their motor impulses, and hence that pallial neuronal numbers do not always correlate with such skills, or that the widely used cylinder task may not be a good measure of motor inhibition. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10071-017-1131-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2017-09-19 2017 /pmc/articles/PMC5640728/ /pubmed/28929247 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10071-017-1131-5 Text en © The Author(s) 2017 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
spellingShingle Original Paper
Kabadayi, Can
Krasheninnikova, Anastasia
O’Neill, Laurie
van de Weijer, Joost
Osvath, Mathias
von Bayern, Auguste M. P.
Are parrots poor at motor self-regulation or is the cylinder task poor at measuring it?
title Are parrots poor at motor self-regulation or is the cylinder task poor at measuring it?
title_full Are parrots poor at motor self-regulation or is the cylinder task poor at measuring it?
title_fullStr Are parrots poor at motor self-regulation or is the cylinder task poor at measuring it?
title_full_unstemmed Are parrots poor at motor self-regulation or is the cylinder task poor at measuring it?
title_short Are parrots poor at motor self-regulation or is the cylinder task poor at measuring it?
title_sort are parrots poor at motor self-regulation or is the cylinder task poor at measuring it?
topic Original Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5640728/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28929247
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10071-017-1131-5
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