Greis Lisa M, Ringler Eva, Whiting Martin J, Szabo Birgit
Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
Division of Behavioural Ecology, Institute of Ecology and Evolution, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.
Behav Processes. 2022 Oct;202:104749. doi: 10.1016/j.beproc.2022.104749. Epub 2022 Sep 5.
To make decisions, animals gather information from the environment in order to avoid costs (e.g., reduced survival) and increase benefits (e.g., foraging success). When time is limited or information is insufficient, most animals face a speed-accuracy trade-off (SAT) - they have to balance the benefits of making quick decisions against the costs of inaccurate decisions. Here, we investigated the relationship between decision accuracy and decision speed in gidgee skinks (Egernia stokesii) performing a food-based spontaneous quantity discrimination task. Rather than a SAT we found a speed-accuracy alignment; lizards made decisions that were fast and accurate, rather than inaccurate. Furthermore, we found only within-, but no between-individual differences in decision making indicating behavioural plasticity in the absence of individual decision styles. Finally, latency to choice was highly repeatable, more so than choice accuracy. Previous work has shown that learning, the costs of a bad decision and task difficulty frequently result in SATs. The lack of a SAT in our lizards might be a direct consequence of our simple testing methodology which prevented learning by not allowing lizards to consume the chosen quantity. To fully understand how SATs develop, different methodologies that control the costs and benefits of decisions should be compared.
为了做出决策，动物会从环境中收集信息，以避免代价（如生存几率降低）并增加益处（如觅食成功）。当时间有限或信息不足时，大多数动物面临速度-准确性权衡（SAT）——它们必须在快速决策的益处与不准确决策的代价之间取得平衡。在此，我们研究了吉迪蜥（Egernia stokesii）在执行基于食物的自发数量辨别任务时决策准确性与决策速度之间的关系。我们没有发现SAT，而是发现了速度-准确性一致性；蜥蜴做出的决策既快速又准确，而非不准确。此外，我们发现决策过程中仅存在个体内差异，不存在个体间差异，这表明在没有个体决策风格的情况下存在行为可塑性。最后，选择潜伏期具有高度重复性，比选择准确性的重复性更高。先前的研究表明，学习、错误决策的代价和任务难度常常导致SAT。我们实验中的蜥蜴缺乏SAT，可能是由于我们简单的测试方法直接导致的，该方法通过不允许蜥蜴消耗所选数量来防止学习。为了全面理解SAT是如何形成的，应该比较控制决策成本和收益的不同方法。
