Little evidence that Eurasian jays protect their caches by responding to cues about a conspecific’s desire and visual perspective
Publication Date
2021-09-10Journal Title
eLife
Publisher
eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd
Volume
10
Language
en
Type
Article
This Version
VoR
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Amodio, P., Farrar, B. G., Krupenye, C., Ostojić, L., & Clayton, N. S. (2021). Little evidence that Eurasian jays protect their caches by responding to cues about a conspecific’s desire and visual perspective. eLife, 10 https://doi.org/10.7554/elife.69647
Description
Funder: European Commission; FundRef: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000780; Grant(s): Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship MENTALIZINGORIGINS Grant reference: 752373
Funder: FP7 Ideas: European Research Council; Grant(s): ERC Grant Agreement N 3399933
Abstract
Eurasian jays have been reported to protect their caches by responding to cues about either the visual perspective or current desire of an observing conspecific, similarly to other corvids. Here, we used established paradigms to test whether these birds can – like humans – integrate multiple cues about different mental states and perform an optimal response accordingly. Across five experiments, which also include replications of previous work, we found little evidence that our jays adjusted their caching behaviour in line with the visual perspective and current desire of another agent, neither by integrating these social cues nor by responding to only one type of cue independently. These results raise questions about the reliability of the previously reported effects and highlight several key issues affecting reliability in comparative cognition research.
Keywords
Research Article, Ecology, Eurasian jay, corvids, theory of mind, desires, perspective, replication, Other
Sponsorship
Leverhulme Trust (Study Abroad Scholarship SAS-2020-004\10)
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (Doctoral Training Programme BB/M011194/1)
Identifiers
69647
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/elife.69647
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/329801
Rights
Licence:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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