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Performance in Object-Choice Aesop's Fable Tasks Are Influenced by Object Biases in New Caledonian Crows but not in
Rachael Miller1, Sarah A Jelbert1, Alex H Taylor2
1Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Plos One
|December 10, 2016
Summary
New Caledonian crows and children show object preferences that affect causal reasoning tasks. Crows, unlike children, may not inherently understand water displacement, impacting their performance on Aesop's Fable tasks.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Science
- Animal Behavior
- Comparative Psychology
Background:
- Causal reasoning is fundamental to cognition, but its extent in non-humans is unclear.
- The Aesop's Fable paradigm tests causal reasoning using object-choice tasks, but object preferences may confound results.
- Previous studies on birds and children using this paradigm did not fully account for pre-existing object biases.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the 'object-bias' hypothesis in causal reasoning tasks.
- To assess whether pre-test object preferences influence performance in New Caledonian crows and children.
- To compare the causal reasoning abilities of crows and children, considering potential biases.
Main Methods:
- Two object-choice Aesop's Fable experiments were conducted with New Caledonian crows and children (5-10 years old).
- Experiments involved sinking vs. floating and solid vs. hollow objects in water-filled tubes.
- Subjects' object preferences were assessed and manipulated through pre-test training before the causal reasoning tasks.
Main Results:
- Both crows and children exhibited pre-test object preferences.
- After training to prefer non-functional objects, crows performed worse than in previous studies, unlike children.
- Crows initially dropped non-functional objects, suggesting a lack of a priori understanding of water displacement, though they learned over time.
- Crows later associated dropping rewarded objects with success, rather than understanding functional properties.
Conclusions:
- Pre-existing object preferences significantly influence performance on causal reasoning tasks in both crows and children.
- New Caledonian crows' success on Aesop's Fable tasks may be partly attributed to object biases, not necessarily a robust understanding of causality.
- Crows may require associative learning to solve these tasks, differing from children's potential a priori reasoning abilities.
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