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The relationship between learning speed and personality is age- and task-dependent in red junglefowl

ABSTRACT: Cognition is fundamental to animals’ lives and an important source of phenotypic variation. Nevertheless, research on individual variation in animal cognition is still limited. Further, although individual cognitive abilities have been suggested to be linked to personality (i.e., consisten...

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Autores principales: Zidar, Josefina, Balogh, Alexandra, Favati, Anna, Jensen, Per, Leimar, Olof, Sorato, Enrico, Løvlie, Hanne
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6182743/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30369707
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00265-018-2579-2
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author Zidar, Josefina
Balogh, Alexandra
Favati, Anna
Jensen, Per
Leimar, Olof
Sorato, Enrico
Løvlie, Hanne
author_facet Zidar, Josefina
Balogh, Alexandra
Favati, Anna
Jensen, Per
Leimar, Olof
Sorato, Enrico
Løvlie, Hanne
author_sort Zidar, Josefina
collection PubMed
description ABSTRACT: Cognition is fundamental to animals’ lives and an important source of phenotypic variation. Nevertheless, research on individual variation in animal cognition is still limited. Further, although individual cognitive abilities have been suggested to be linked to personality (i.e., consistent behavioral differences among individuals), few studies have linked performance across multiple cognitive tasks to personality traits. Thus, the interplays between cognition and personality are still unclear. We therefore investigated the relationships between an important aspect of cognition, learning, and personality, by exposing young and adult red junglefowl (Gallus gallus) to multiple learning tasks (discriminative, reversal, and spatial learning) and personality assays (novel arena, novel object, and tonic immobility). Learning speed was not correlated across learning tasks, and learning speed in discrimination and spatial learning tasks did not co-vary with personality. However, learning speed in reversal tasks was associated with individual variation in exploration, and in an age-dependent manner. More explorative chicks learned the reversal task faster than less explorative ones, while the opposite association was found for adult females (learning speed could not be assayed in adult males). In the same reversal tasks, we also observed a sex difference in learning speed of chicks, with females learning faster than males. Our results suggest that the relationship between cognition and personality is complex, as shown by its task- and age-dependence, and encourage further investigation of the causality and dynamics of this relationship. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT: In the ancestor of today’s chickens, the red junglefowl, we explored how personality and cognition relate by exposing both chicks and adults to several learning tasks and personality assays. Our birds differed in personality and learning speed, while fast learners in one task did not necessarily learn fast in another (i.e., there were no overall “smarter” birds). Exploration correlated with learning speed in the more complex task of reversal learning: faster exploring chicks, but slower exploring adult females, learned faster, compared to less explorative birds. Other aspects of cognition and personality did not correlate. Our results suggest that cognition and personality are related, and that the relationship can differ depending on task and age of the animal. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s00265-018-2579-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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spelling pubmed-61827432018-10-24 The relationship between learning speed and personality is age- and task-dependent in red junglefowl Zidar, Josefina Balogh, Alexandra Favati, Anna Jensen, Per Leimar, Olof Sorato, Enrico Løvlie, Hanne Behav Ecol Sociobiol Original Article ABSTRACT: Cognition is fundamental to animals’ lives and an important source of phenotypic variation. Nevertheless, research on individual variation in animal cognition is still limited. Further, although individual cognitive abilities have been suggested to be linked to personality (i.e., consistent behavioral differences among individuals), few studies have linked performance across multiple cognitive tasks to personality traits. Thus, the interplays between cognition and personality are still unclear. We therefore investigated the relationships between an important aspect of cognition, learning, and personality, by exposing young and adult red junglefowl (Gallus gallus) to multiple learning tasks (discriminative, reversal, and spatial learning) and personality assays (novel arena, novel object, and tonic immobility). Learning speed was not correlated across learning tasks, and learning speed in discrimination and spatial learning tasks did not co-vary with personality. However, learning speed in reversal tasks was associated with individual variation in exploration, and in an age-dependent manner. More explorative chicks learned the reversal task faster than less explorative ones, while the opposite association was found for adult females (learning speed could not be assayed in adult males). In the same reversal tasks, we also observed a sex difference in learning speed of chicks, with females learning faster than males. Our results suggest that the relationship between cognition and personality is complex, as shown by its task- and age-dependence, and encourage further investigation of the causality and dynamics of this relationship. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT: In the ancestor of today’s chickens, the red junglefowl, we explored how personality and cognition relate by exposing both chicks and adults to several learning tasks and personality assays. Our birds differed in personality and learning speed, while fast learners in one task did not necessarily learn fast in another (i.e., there were no overall “smarter” birds). Exploration correlated with learning speed in the more complex task of reversal learning: faster exploring chicks, but slower exploring adult females, learned faster, compared to less explorative birds. Other aspects of cognition and personality did not correlate. Our results suggest that cognition and personality are related, and that the relationship can differ depending on task and age of the animal. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s00265-018-2579-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2018-09-26 2018 /pmc/articles/PMC6182743/ /pubmed/30369707 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00265-018-2579-2 Text en © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This 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 Article
Zidar, Josefina
Balogh, Alexandra
Favati, Anna
Jensen, Per
Leimar, Olof
Sorato, Enrico
Løvlie, Hanne
The relationship between learning speed and personality is age- and task-dependent in red junglefowl
title The relationship between learning speed and personality is age- and task-dependent in red junglefowl
title_full The relationship between learning speed and personality is age- and task-dependent in red junglefowl
title_fullStr The relationship between learning speed and personality is age- and task-dependent in red junglefowl
title_full_unstemmed The relationship between learning speed and personality is age- and task-dependent in red junglefowl
title_short The relationship between learning speed and personality is age- and task-dependent in red junglefowl
title_sort relationship between learning speed and personality is age- and task-dependent in red junglefowl
topic Original Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6182743/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30369707
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00265-018-2579-2
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