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Poor numerical performance of guppies tested in a Skinner box

We tested the hypothesis that part of the gap in numerical competence between fish and warm-blooded vertebrates might be related to the more efficient procedures (e.g. automated conditioning chambers) used to investigate the former and could be filled by adopting an adapted version of the Skinner bo...

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Autores principales: Gatto, Elia, Testolin, Alberto, Bisazza, Angelo, Zorzi, Marco, Lucon-Xiccato, Tyrone
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7542150/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33028916
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-73851-1
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author Gatto, Elia
Testolin, Alberto
Bisazza, Angelo
Zorzi, Marco
Lucon-Xiccato, Tyrone
author_facet Gatto, Elia
Testolin, Alberto
Bisazza, Angelo
Zorzi, Marco
Lucon-Xiccato, Tyrone
author_sort Gatto, Elia
collection PubMed
description We tested the hypothesis that part of the gap in numerical competence between fish and warm-blooded vertebrates might be related to the more efficient procedures (e.g. automated conditioning chambers) used to investigate the former and could be filled by adopting an adapted version of the Skinner box in fish. We trained guppies in a visual numerosity discrimination task, featuring two difficulty levels (3 vs. 5 and 3 vs. 4) and three conditions of congruency between numerical and non-numerical cues. Unexpectedly, guppies trained with the automated device showed a much worse performance compared to previous investigations employing more “ecological” procedures. Statistical analysis indicated that the guppies overall chose the correct stimulus more often than chance; however, their average accuracy did not exceed 60% correct responses. Learning measured as performance improvement over training was significant only for the stimuli with larger numerical difference. Additionally, the target numerosity was selected more often than chance level only for the set of stimuli in which area and number were fully congruent. Re-analysis of prior studies indicate that the gap between training with the Skinner box and with a naturalistic setting was present only for numerical discriminations, but not for colour and shape discriminations. We suggest that applying automated conditioning chambers to fish might increase cognitive load and therefore interfere with achievement of numerosity discriminations.
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spelling pubmed-75421502020-10-08 Poor numerical performance of guppies tested in a Skinner box Gatto, Elia Testolin, Alberto Bisazza, Angelo Zorzi, Marco Lucon-Xiccato, Tyrone Sci Rep Article We tested the hypothesis that part of the gap in numerical competence between fish and warm-blooded vertebrates might be related to the more efficient procedures (e.g. automated conditioning chambers) used to investigate the former and could be filled by adopting an adapted version of the Skinner box in fish. We trained guppies in a visual numerosity discrimination task, featuring two difficulty levels (3 vs. 5 and 3 vs. 4) and three conditions of congruency between numerical and non-numerical cues. Unexpectedly, guppies trained with the automated device showed a much worse performance compared to previous investigations employing more “ecological” procedures. Statistical analysis indicated that the guppies overall chose the correct stimulus more often than chance; however, their average accuracy did not exceed 60% correct responses. Learning measured as performance improvement over training was significant only for the stimuli with larger numerical difference. Additionally, the target numerosity was selected more often than chance level only for the set of stimuli in which area and number were fully congruent. Re-analysis of prior studies indicate that the gap between training with the Skinner box and with a naturalistic setting was present only for numerical discriminations, but not for colour and shape discriminations. We suggest that applying automated conditioning chambers to fish might increase cognitive load and therefore interfere with achievement of numerosity discriminations. Nature Publishing Group UK 2020-10-07 /pmc/articles/PMC7542150/ /pubmed/33028916 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-73851-1 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Gatto, Elia
Testolin, Alberto
Bisazza, Angelo
Zorzi, Marco
Lucon-Xiccato, Tyrone
Poor numerical performance of guppies tested in a Skinner box
title Poor numerical performance of guppies tested in a Skinner box
title_full Poor numerical performance of guppies tested in a Skinner box
title_fullStr Poor numerical performance of guppies tested in a Skinner box
title_full_unstemmed Poor numerical performance of guppies tested in a Skinner box
title_short Poor numerical performance of guppies tested in a Skinner box
title_sort poor numerical performance of guppies tested in a skinner box
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7542150/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33028916
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-73851-1
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