Agrillo Christian, Miletto Petrazzini Maria Elena, Bisazza Angelo
Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, Italy.
Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, Italy.
Behav Processes. 2017 Aug;141(Pt 2):161-171. doi: 10.1016/j.beproc.2017.02.001. Epub 2017 Feb 3.
The ability to utilize numerical information can be adaptive in a number of ecological contexts including foraging, mating, parental care, and anti-predator strategies. Numerical abilities of mammals and birds have been studied both in natural conditions and in controlled laboratory conditions using a variety of approaches. During the last decade this ability was also investigated in some fish species. Here we reviewed the main methods used to study this group, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each of the methods used. Fish have only been studied under laboratory conditions and among the methods used with other species, only two have been systematically used in fish-spontaneous choice tests and discrimination learning procedures. In the former case, the choice between two options is observed in a biologically relevant situation and the degree of preference for the larger/smaller group is taken as a measure of the capacity to discriminate the two quantities (e.g., two shoals differing in number). In discrimination learning tasks, fish are trained to select the larger or the smaller of two sets of abstract objects, typically two-dimensional geometric figures, using food or social companions as reward. Beyond methodological differences, what emerges from the literature is a substantial similarity of the numerical abilities of fish with those of other vertebrates studied.
利用数字信息的能力在包括觅食、交配、亲代抚育和反捕食策略在内的许多生态环境中都具有适应性。哺乳动物和鸟类的数字能力已在自然条件和可控实验室条件下通过多种方法进行了研究。在过去十年中，这种能力也在一些鱼类物种中得到了研究。在此，我们回顾了用于研究该类群的主要方法，突出了每种方法的优缺点。鱼类仅在实验室条件下进行过研究，在与其他物种相同的方法中，只有两种已被系统地用于鱼类——自发选择测试和辨别学习程序。在前一种情况下，在生物学相关情境中观察两种选择之间的抉择，对较大/较小群体的偏好程度被用作区分这两个数量（例如，数量不同的两群鱼）能力的一种度量。在辨别学习任务中，使用食物或社交同伴作为奖励，训练鱼类选择两组抽象物体中较大或较小的一组，通常是二维几何图形。除了方法上的差异，从文献中可以看出，鱼类的数字能力与其他已研究的脊椎动物的数字能力有很大的相似性。
