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Difficulties when using video playback to investigate social cognition in California scrub-jays (Aphelocoma californica)

Previous research has suggested that videos can be used to experimentally manipulate social stimuli. In the present study, we used the California scrub-jays’ cache protection strategies to assess whether video playback can be used to simulate conspecifics in a social context. In both the lab and the...

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Autores principales: Brecht, Katharina F., Ostojić, Ljerka, Legg, Edward W., Clayton, Nicola S.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5857174/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29576946
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4451
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author Brecht, Katharina F.
Ostojić, Ljerka
Legg, Edward W.
Clayton, Nicola S.
author_facet Brecht, Katharina F.
Ostojić, Ljerka
Legg, Edward W.
Clayton, Nicola S.
author_sort Brecht, Katharina F.
collection PubMed
description Previous research has suggested that videos can be used to experimentally manipulate social stimuli. In the present study, we used the California scrub-jays’ cache protection strategies to assess whether video playback can be used to simulate conspecifics in a social context. In both the lab and the field, scrub-jays are known to exhibit a range of behaviours to protect their caches from potential pilferage by a conspecific, for example by hiding food in locations out of the observer’s view or by re-caching previously made caches once the observer has left. Here, we presented scrub-jays with videos of a conspecific observer as well as two non-social conditions during a caching period and assessed whether they would cache out of the observer’s “view” (Experiment 1) or would re-cache their caches once the observer was no longer present (Experiment 2). In contrast to previous studies using live observers, the scrub-jays’ caching and re-caching behaviour was not influenced by whether the observer was present or absent. These findings suggest that there might be limitations in using video playback of social agents to mimic real-life situations when investigating corvid decision making.
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spelling pubmed-58571742018-03-24 Difficulties when using video playback to investigate social cognition in California scrub-jays (Aphelocoma californica) Brecht, Katharina F. Ostojić, Ljerka Legg, Edward W. Clayton, Nicola S. PeerJ Animal Behavior Previous research has suggested that videos can be used to experimentally manipulate social stimuli. In the present study, we used the California scrub-jays’ cache protection strategies to assess whether video playback can be used to simulate conspecifics in a social context. In both the lab and the field, scrub-jays are known to exhibit a range of behaviours to protect their caches from potential pilferage by a conspecific, for example by hiding food in locations out of the observer’s view or by re-caching previously made caches once the observer has left. Here, we presented scrub-jays with videos of a conspecific observer as well as two non-social conditions during a caching period and assessed whether they would cache out of the observer’s “view” (Experiment 1) or would re-cache their caches once the observer was no longer present (Experiment 2). In contrast to previous studies using live observers, the scrub-jays’ caching and re-caching behaviour was not influenced by whether the observer was present or absent. These findings suggest that there might be limitations in using video playback of social agents to mimic real-life situations when investigating corvid decision making. PeerJ Inc. 2018-03-14 /pmc/articles/PMC5857174/ /pubmed/29576946 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4451 Text en ©2018 Brecht 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, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Animal Behavior
Brecht, Katharina F.
Ostojić, Ljerka
Legg, Edward W.
Clayton, Nicola S.
Difficulties when using video playback to investigate social cognition in California scrub-jays (Aphelocoma californica)
title Difficulties when using video playback to investigate social cognition in California scrub-jays (Aphelocoma californica)
title_full Difficulties when using video playback to investigate social cognition in California scrub-jays (Aphelocoma californica)
title_fullStr Difficulties when using video playback to investigate social cognition in California scrub-jays (Aphelocoma californica)
title_full_unstemmed Difficulties when using video playback to investigate social cognition in California scrub-jays (Aphelocoma californica)
title_short Difficulties when using video playback to investigate social cognition in California scrub-jays (Aphelocoma californica)
title_sort difficulties when using video playback to investigate social cognition in california scrub-jays (aphelocoma californica)
topic Animal Behavior
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5857174/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29576946
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4451
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