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Cognitive Control in Distracted Dinosaurs

Boehly, Thibault LU orcid ; Osvath, Mathias LU and Reber, Stephan A. LU (2023) The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour Winter 2023
Abstract
Cognitive control is a skill used to control one’s own behaviour to reach a goal. We compared this skill across archosaurs by using the distraction task on American alligators, emus, chickens, and common ravens. We investigated whether the animals would still find a food reward hidden behind one of two identical opaque barriers after picking up a food distraction. Results show that all species can find the hidden food reward despite being distracted, but the presence of a distraction impaired the performance of all species except the common raven. All species being from the clade Archosauria, it suggests that cognitive control is a conserved ability which underwent little changes since their last common ancestor, allowing to draw some... (More)
Cognitive control is a skill used to control one’s own behaviour to reach a goal. We compared this skill across archosaurs by using the distraction task on American alligators, emus, chickens, and common ravens. We investigated whether the animals would still find a food reward hidden behind one of two identical opaque barriers after picking up a food distraction. Results show that all species can find the hidden food reward despite being distracted, but the presence of a distraction impaired the performance of all species except the common raven. All species being from the clade Archosauria, it suggests that cognitive control is a conserved ability which underwent little changes since their last common ancestor, allowing to draw some inferences about extinct related taxa (e.g., non-avian dinosaurs). Moreover, raven’s unflinching performance could be explained by the sharp increase in telencephalic neuron numbers which occurred in the clade Telluraves. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
; and
organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to conference
publication status
published
subject
keywords
Cognitive control, Distraction, Birds, Crocodylians, Dinosaurs
pages
1 pages
conference name
The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour Winter 2023
conference location
Edinburgh, United Kingdom
conference dates
2023-12-13 - 2023-12-14
project
The Evolution of Executive Functions in Archosauria
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
e3b7c967-54e2-4ee4-bc14-db97ab45b3a5
date added to LUP
2024-01-09 13:51:38
date last changed
2024-01-15 10:33:57
@misc{e3b7c967-54e2-4ee4-bc14-db97ab45b3a5,
  abstract     = {{Cognitive control is a skill used to control one’s own behaviour to reach a goal. We compared this skill across archosaurs by using the distraction task on American alligators, emus, chickens, and common ravens. We investigated whether the animals would still find a food reward hidden behind one of two identical opaque barriers after picking up a food distraction. Results show that all species can find the hidden food reward despite being distracted, but the presence of a distraction impaired the performance of all species except the common raven. All species being from the clade Archosauria, it suggests that cognitive control is a conserved ability which underwent little changes since their last common ancestor, allowing to draw some inferences about extinct related taxa (e.g., non-avian dinosaurs). Moreover, raven’s unflinching performance could be explained by the sharp increase in telencephalic neuron numbers which occurred in the clade Telluraves.}},
  author       = {{Boehly, Thibault and Osvath, Mathias and Reber, Stephan A.}},
  keywords     = {{Cognitive control; Distraction; Birds; Crocodylians; Dinosaurs}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  title        = {{Cognitive Control in Distracted Dinosaurs}},
  url          = {{https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/files/168727297/23-12-13_ASAB_poster.pdf}},
  year         = {{2023}},
}