Response conflicts occur when the correct goal-congruent response is weaker than an alternative but incorrect response. To overcome response conflicts, the stronger response has to be inhibited, making the study of response conflicts an important research topic in higher order cognition. Response conflicts often result in conflict interference-an increase in error rates and response times. Here, we ask whether an invertebrate-the ant, Lasius niger-can solve such response conflicts and, if so, whether it suffers from conflict interference. We also ask whether ants show congruency sequence effects, where subjects show transiently reduced conflict inference when conflicts repeat. We developed task-mimicking aspects of the Stroop color-word test, in which ants must learn to follow a neutral cue (a scent) on a Y maze but ignore a dominant and innately meaningful signal (a pheromone trail). The pheromone can be congruent with the scent cue (lead to the same maze arm) or be incongruent. Both accuracy and task-solving latency suffered when the information sources were incongruent. There was no evidence of congruency sequence effects. Because of limitations of the experimental design, we cannot rule out that insects would also show a congruency sequence effect under a different experimental paradigm. Although the methodology is not directly comparable to human studies, the presence of clear conflict interference suggests parallels between insect and human information processing, in spite of completely different brains. This powerful and straightforward methodology opens the possibility of exploring conflict interference in the presence of prepotent response tendencies in an invertebrate model. We hope this work encourages the field of response competition to use the vast literature on response competition in animal behavior studies. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
The secretary problem is a notorious mathematical puzzle in which one attempts to hire the best available candidate from a pool of known size. Under specific constraints, the problem has an ideal solution, but it is difficult for humans to solve. In particular, humans generally consider too few options from the available pool and in doing so make inferior hires. Three experiments investigated pigeons' and humans' choices on a version of the secretary problem. Pigeons performed suboptimally by choosing too soon, but suffered only limited costs to their rate of earned reinforcement. Depending on the instruction set, human participants approximated either prior suboptimal human results or current pigeons' results. These results may provide some insight into what makes the problem difficult to solve and how the secretary problem connects with decisions in the real world. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
Delay of gratification, the ability to forgo an immediate reward and wait to gain a reward better in either quality or quantity, has been used as a metric for temporal discounting, self-control, and the ability to plan for the future in both humans (particularly children) and nonhumans. Several avian species have been able to wait for a better quality reward for up to 15 min, but none seem able to wait for a better quantity reward for any significant period of time. Using a token system (where each wooden heart represents 1 nut piece), we demonstrated that a Grey parrot-who had previously waited up to 15 min for better quality-would now wait for better quantity, again for up to 15 min. Thus, symbolic distancing-that is, removal of the immediate presence of the hedonic item-enabled him to perform at levels comparable with young children on the classic test and might be a viable method for training executive function. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
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