Bonin Leonore, Manrique Héctor M, Bshary Redouan
Biology Institute, Université de Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
Department of Psychology and Sociology, University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain.
Anim Cogn. 2025 Jun 4;28(1):43. doi: 10.1007/s10071-025-01959-w.
Working memory (WM), an attention-based short-term storage system responsible for the manipulation and integration of past knowledge with present information for goal-directed behavior, is a key executive function and a principal predictor of general intelligence. Despite its importance, WM has not been a major research topic in animal behavior. Here, we first summarize key ideas related to WM from the social sciences for interested colleagues. Given that past methodological inconsistencies have led to mixed results and conclusions across various species, we then designed experiments that incorporate the critical components of WM, facilitating cross-species comparisons and accounting for potential ecological influences. We present such experiments on WM in an ectothermic vertebrate, the cleaner wrasse (Labroides dimidiatus), which faces environmental challenges potentially requiring complex cognitive adaptations. Overcoming several experimental challenges, we consistently obtained negative results across multiple experimental paradigms. As our experiments were specifically designed to test WM, our negative results call into question previous studies in other fish species that provide evidence for WM using different paradigms. More specific tests for WM should be developed to confirm the presence or absence of this executive function in other ectotherm vertebrates. The absence of WM may be a key factor underlying the significant encephalization gap between ectotherm and endotherm vertebrate species.
工作记忆（WM）是一种基于注意力的短期存储系统，负责将过去的知识与当前信息进行操作和整合，以实现目标导向行为，它是一种关键的执行功能，也是一般智力的主要预测指标。尽管其很重要，但工作记忆在动物行为学中并非主要研究课题。在此，我们首先为感兴趣的同事总结社会科学中与工作记忆相关的关键观点。鉴于过去方法上的不一致导致了跨物种研究结果和结论的混杂，我们随后设计了包含工作记忆关键成分的实验，以促进跨物种比较并考虑潜在的生态影响。我们展示了针对一种变温脊椎动物——裂唇鱼（Labroides dimidiatus）的工作记忆实验，这种鱼面临着可能需要复杂认知适应的环境挑战。克服了几个实验挑战后，我们在多个实验范式中始终得到了阴性结果。由于我们的实验是专门设计用于测试工作记忆的，我们的阴性结果对之前在其他鱼类物种中使用不同范式为工作记忆提供证据的研究提出了质疑。应该开发更具体的工作记忆测试方法，以确认其他变温脊椎动物中这种执行功能的有无。工作记忆的缺失可能是变温脊椎动物和恒温脊椎动物物种之间显著脑化差距的一个关键因素。
