Recent developments in parrot cognition: a quadrennial update

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Abstract

Psittacines, along with corvids, are commonly referred to as ‘feathered apes’ due to their advanced cognitive abilities. Until rather recently, the research effort on parrot cognition was lagging behind that on corvids, however current developments show that the number of parrot studies is steadily increasing. In 2018, M. L. Lambert et al. provided a comprehensive review on the status of the most important work done so far in parrot and corvid cognition. Nevertheless, only a little more than 4 years after this publication, more than 50 new parrot studies have been published, some of them chartering completely new territory. On the 25th anniversary of Animal Cognition we think this warrants a detailed review of parrot cognition research over the last 4 years. We aim to capture recent developments and current trends in this rapidly expanding and diversifying field.

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Executive Functions

Adele Diamond (2013)

Executive functions (EFs) make possible mentally playing with ideas; taking the time to think before acting; meeting novel, unanticipated challenges; resisting temptations; and staying focused. Core EFs are inhibition [response inhibition (self-control—resisting temptations and resisting acting impulsively) and interference control (selective attention and cognitive inhibition)], working memory, and cognitive flexibility (including creatively thinking “outside the box,” seeing anything from different perspectives, and quickly and flexibly adapting to changed circumstances). The developmental progression and representative measures of each are discussed. Controversies are addressed (e.g., the relation between EFs and fluid intelligence, self-regulation, executive attention, and effortful control, and the relation between working memory and inhibition and attention). The importance of social, emotional, and physical health for cognitive health is discussed because stress, lack of sleep, loneliness, or lack of exercise each impair EFs. That EFs are trainable and can be improved with practice is addressed, including diverse methods tried thus far.

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The unity and diversity of executive functions and their contributions to complex "Frontal Lobe" tasks: a latent variable analysis.

Akira Miyake, Naomi Friedman, Michael J Emerson … (2000)

This individual differences study examined the separability of three often postulated executive functions-mental set shifting ("Shifting"), information updating and monitoring ("Updating"), and inhibition of prepotent responses ("Inhibition")-and their roles in complex "frontal lobe" or "executive" tasks. One hundred thirty-seven college students performed a set of relatively simple experimental tasks that are considered to predominantly tap each target executive function as well as a set of frequently used executive tasks: the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), Tower of Hanoi (TOH), random number generation (RNG), operation span, and dual tasking. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the three target executive functions are moderately correlated with one another, but are clearly separable. Moreover, structural equation modeling suggested that the three functions contribute differentially to performance on complex executive tasks. Specifically, WCST performance was related most strongly to Shifting, TOH to Inhibition, RNG to Inhibition and Updating, and operation span to Updating. Dual task performance was not related to any of the three target functions. These results suggest that it is important to recognize both the unity and diversity of executive functions and that latent variable analysis is a useful approach to studying the organization and roles of executive functions. Copyright 2000 Academic Press.

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The evolution of self-control.

E. L. MacLean, B. Hare, C L Nunn … (2014)

Cognition presents evolutionary research with one of its greatest challenges. Cognitive evolution has been explained at the proximate level by shifts in absolute and relative brain volume and at the ultimate level by differences in social and dietary complexity. However, no study has integrated the experimental and phylogenetic approach at the scale required to rigorously test these explanations. Instead, previous research has largely relied on various measures of brain size as proxies for cognitive abilities. We experimentally evaluated these major evolutionary explanations by quantitatively comparing the cognitive performance of 567 individuals representing 36 species on two problem-solving tasks measuring self-control. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that absolute brain volume best predicted performance across species and accounted for considerably more variance than brain volume controlling for body mass. This result corroborates recent advances in evolutionary neurobiology and illustrates the cognitive consequences of cortical reorganization through increases in brain volume. Within primates, dietary breadth but not social group size was a strong predictor of species differences in self-control. Our results implicate robust evolutionary relationships between dietary breadth, absolute brain volume, and self-control. These findings provide a significant first step toward quantifying the primate cognitive phenome and explaining the process of cognitive evolution.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Theresa Rössler:

ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2403-8375

Theresa.Roessler@vetmeduni.ac.at

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Anim Cogn

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Anim Cogn

Title: Animal Cognition

Publisher: Springer Berlin Heidelberg (Berlin/Heidelberg )

ISSN (Print): 1435-9448

ISSN (Electronic): 1435-9456

Publication date (Electronic): 22 December 2022

Publication date PMC-release: 22 December 2022

Publication date (Print): 2023

Volume: 26

Issue: 1

Pages: 199-228

Affiliations

[1 ]Messerli Research Institute, University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, Medical University Vienna, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

[2 ]GRID grid.10420.37, ISNI 0000 0001 2286 1424, Department of Cognitive Biology, , University of Vienna, ; Vienna, Austria

Author information

Theresa Rössler http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2403-8375

Alice M. Auersperg http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7405-9791

Article

Publisher ID: 1733

DOI: 10.1007/s10071-022-01733-2

PMC ID: 9877086

PubMed ID: 36547738

SO-VID: 8b92988e-293a-4b2e-b877-ccaf1b193721

License:

Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

History

Date received : 16 July 2022

Date revision received : 2 December 2022

Date accepted : 6 December 2022

Funding

Funded by: FundRef http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100002428, Austrian Science Fund;

Award ID: Y01309

Award Recipient : Alice M. Auersperg

Funded by: Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

Open Access :

Open access funding provided by Austrian Science Fund (FWF).

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ScienceOpen disciplines: Animal science & Zoology

Keywords: parrots,psittacines,domain-general abilities,physical cognition,social cognition

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ScienceOpen disciplines: Animal science & Zoology

Keywords: parrots, psittacines, domain-general abilities, physical cognition, social cognition

Recent developments in parrot cognition: a quadrennial update

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Most cited references 199

Executive Functions

The unity and diversity of executive functions and their contributions to complex "Frontal Lobe" tasks: a latent variable analysis.

The evolution of self-control.

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