Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, Padua, Italy.
Department of Information Engineering, University of Padova, Padua, Italy.
Sci Rep. 2020 Oct 7;10(1):16724. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-73851-1.
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.
我们检验了这样一个假设，即鱼类和温血脊椎动物在数字能力方面的差距部分可能与前者所使用的更有效的程序（例如自动化条件室）有关，并且可以通过在鱼类中采用经过改编的斯金纳箱版本来填补这一差距。我们在视觉数量辨别任务中对孔雀鱼进行了训练，该任务具有两个难度级别（3 对 5 和 3 对 4）和三个数字与非数字线索之间一致性条件。出乎意料的是，与以前采用更“生态”程序的研究相比，使用自动化设备训练的孔雀鱼的表现要差得多。统计分析表明，孔雀鱼总体上选择正确刺激的次数多于随机次数；但是，它们的平均准确率没有超过 60%的正确反应。仅当刺激之间存在较大的数值差异时，作为训练中表现提高的学习才具有统计学意义。此外，仅当面积和数量完全一致的一组刺激中，目标数量才比机会水平更频繁地被选择。对先前研究的重新分析表明，仅在数字辨别方面，使用斯金纳箱进行训练与使用自然环境进行训练之间存在差距，而在颜色和形状辨别方面则没有差距。我们认为，将自动化条件室应用于鱼类可能会增加认知负担，从而干扰数量辨别任务的完成。
