%0 Journal Article
%A Jelbert, Sarah A.
%A Taylor, Alexander H.
%A Gray, Russell D.
%+ Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Max Planck Society
%T Does absolute brain size really predict self-control? Hand-tracking training improves performance on the A-not-B task : 
%G eng
%U https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0007-579E-6
%R 10.1098/rsbl.2015.0871
%7 2016-02-03
%D 2016
%* Review method: peer-reviewed
%X Large-scale, comparative cognition studies are set to revolutionize the way we investigate and understand the evolution of intelligence. However, the conclusions reached by such work have a key limitation: the cognitive tests themselves. If factors other than cognition can systematically affect the performance of a subset of animals on these tests, we risk drawing the wrong conclusions about how intelligence evolves. Here, we examined whether this is the case for the A-not-B task, recently used by MacLean and co-workers to study self-control among 36 different species. Non-primates performed poorly on this task; possibly because they have difficulty tracking the movements of a human demonstrator, and not because they lack self-control. To test this, we assessed the performance of New Caledonian crows on the A-not-B task before and after two types of training. New Caledonian crows trained to track rewards moved by a human demonstrator were more likely to pass the A-not-B test than birds trained on an unrelated choice task involving inhibitory control. Our findings demonstrate that overlooked task demands can affect performance on a cognitive task, and so bring into question MacLean’s conclusion that absolute brain size best predicts self-control.
%J Biology Letters
%O Biol. Lett.
%V 12
%N 2
%I The Royal Society
%C London, [England]
%@ 1744-9561