Urhan Utku, Mårdberg Magnus, Isaksson Emil, van Oers Kees, Brodin Anders
Department of Biology, Lund University, Lund, Sweden.
Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW), Wageningen, The Netherlands.
R Soc Open Sci. 2023 Feb 22;10(2):221176. doi: 10.1098/rsos.221176. eCollection 2023 Feb.
Motor inhibition refers to the ability to inhibit immediate responses in favour of adaptive actions that are mediated by executive functions. This ability may be an indication of general cognitive ability in animals and is important for advanced cognitive functions. In this study, our aim was to compare motor inhibition ability of two closely related passerines that share the same habitat. To do this, we tested motor inhibition ability using a transparent cylinder task in blue tits in the same way as we previously tested great tits. To test whether the experience of transparent objects would affect the performance of these species differently, both in the present experiment using blue tits and our previous one on great tits, we divided 33 wild-caught individuals into three different treatment groups with 11 birds each. Before the test we allowed one group to experience a transparent cylindrical object, one group to experience a transparent wall and a third group was kept naive. In general, blue tits performed worse than great tits, and unlike the great tits, they did not improve their performance after experience with a transparent cylinder-like object. The performance difference may stem from difference in foraging behaviour between these species.
运动抑制是指抑制即时反应以支持由执行功能介导的适应性行动的能力。这种能力可能是动物一般认知能力的一个指标，对高级认知功能很重要。在本研究中，我们的目的是比较两种共享相同栖息地的近缘雀形目鸟类的运动抑制能力。为此，我们使用透明圆柱体任务以与之前测试大山雀相同的方式测试了蓝山雀的运动抑制能力。为了测试透明物体的经验是否会对这些物种的表现产生不同影响，在本次使用蓝山雀的实验以及我们之前关于大山雀的实验中，我们将33只野生捕获的个体分成三个不同的处理组，每组11只鸟。在测试前，我们让一组体验一个透明圆柱形物体，一组体验一堵透明墙，第三组保持未接触状态。总体而言，蓝山雀的表现比大山雀差，并且与大山雀不同的是，它们在体验类似透明圆柱体的物体后并没有提高表现。表现差异可能源于这些物种在觅食行为上的差异。
