IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/beheco/v25y2014i6p1299-1301..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Toward wild psychometrics: linking individual cognitive differences to fitness

Author

Listed:
  • Alex Thornton
  • Jess Isden
  • Joah R. Madden

Abstract

Our understanding of the processes underlying animal cognition has improved dramatically in recent years, but we still know little about how cognitive traits evolve. Following Darwinian logic, to understand how selection acts on such traits we must determine whether they vary between individuals, influence fitness, and are heritable. A handful of recent studies have begun to explore the relationship between variation in individual cognitive performance and fitness under natural conditions. Such work holds great promise, but its success is contingent on accurate characterization and quantification of the cognitive differences between individuals. Existing research has typically adopted a "problem-solving" approach, assuming that individuals that complete novel tasks have greater cognitive prowess than those that do not. We argue that this approach is incapable of determining that individual differences are due to cognitive factors. We propose the adoption of psychologically grounded psychometric testing and discuss the criteria necessary to examine the fitness consequences of cognitive variation in the wild.

Suggested Citation

  • Alex Thornton & Jess Isden & Joah R. Madden, 2014. "Toward wild psychometrics: linking individual cognitive differences to fitness," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 25(6), pages 1299-1301.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:beheco:v:25:y:2014:i:6:p:1299-1301.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/beheco/aru095
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Julie Morand-Ferron & Ella F. Cole & James E.C. Rawles & John L. Quinn, 2011. "Who are the innovators? A field experiment with 2 passerine species," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 22(6), pages 1241-1248.
    2. Neeltje J. Boogert & Tim W. Fawcett & Louis Lefebvre, 2011. "Mate choice for cognitive traits: a review of the evidence in nonhuman vertebrates," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 22(3), pages 447-459.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Candy Rowe & Susan D. Healy, 2014. "Measuring cognition will be difficult but worth it: a response to comments on Rowe and Healy," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 25(6), pages 1298-1298.
    2. R. Croston & C.L. Branch & D.Y. Kozlovsky & R. Dukas & V.V. Pravosudov, 2015. "Heritability and the evolution of cognitive traits," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 26(6), pages 1447-1459.
    3. Niclas Kolm, 2014. "Measuring variation in cognition can be done, but it requires hard empirical work: a comment on Rowe and Healy," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 25(6), pages 1296-1297.
    4. Alex Thornton, 2014. "How and why are some species so smart? A comment on Rowe and Healy," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 25(6), pages 1294-1295.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. MacKinlay, Regan D. & Shaw, Rachael C., 2019. "Male New Zealand robin (Petroica longipes) song repertoire size does not correlate with cognitive performance in the wild," Intelligence, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 25-33.
    2. Oded Keynan & Amanda R. Ridley & Arnon Lotem, 2015. "Social foraging strategies and acquisition of novel foraging skills in cooperatively breeding Arabian babblers," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 26(1), pages 207-214.
    3. Jason Keagy & Jean-François Savard & Gerald Borgia, 2012. "Cognitive ability and the evolution of multiple behavioral display traits," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 23(2), pages 448-456.
    4. R. Croston & C.L. Branch & D.Y. Kozlovsky & R. Dukas & V.V. Pravosudov, 2015. "Heritability and the evolution of cognitive traits," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 26(6), pages 1447-1459.
    5. Katarzyna Galasinska & Aleksandra Szymkow, 2021. "The More Fertile, the More Creative: Changes in Women’s Creative Potential across the Ovulatory Cycle," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(10), pages 1-15, May.
    6. Noa Truskanov & Rimon Shy & Arnon Lotem, 2018. "Context-specific learning and its implications for social learning," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 29(5), pages 1046-1055.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:beheco:v:25:y:2014:i:6:p:1299-1301.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/beheco .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.