Abstract
One key aspect of domain-general thought is the ability to integrate information across different cognitive domains. Here, we tested whether kea (Nestor notabilis) can use relative quantities when predicting sampling outcomes, and then integrate both physical information about the presence of a barrier, and social information about the biased sampling of an experimenter, into their predictions. Our results show that kea exhibit three signatures of statistical inference, and therefore can integrate knowledge across different cognitive domains to flexibly adjust their predictions of sampling events. This result provides evidence that true statistical inference is found outside of the great apes, and that aspects of domain-general thinking can convergently evolve in brains with a highly different structure from primates. This has important implications not only for our understanding of how intelligence evolves, but also for research focused on how to create artificial domain-general thought processes.
Highlights
One key aspect of domain-general thought is the ability to integrate information across different cognitive domains
When observing sampling events with a large number of objects, infants show true statistical inference, using the relative frequency of objects in a population to infer the most likely sampling outcome, rather than using quantity heuristics based on the absolute number of objects[28]
Great apes are the only nonhuman species that have demonstrated true statistical inference, as they use the relative numbers of items within and between populations when predicting sampling events[38,39], rather than using quantity heuristics based on the absolute number of positive or negative objects
Summary
One key aspect of domain-general thought is the ability to integrate information across different cognitive domains. Our results show that kea exhibit three signatures of statistical inference, and can integrate knowledge across different cognitive domains to flexibly adjust their predictions of sampling events This result provides evidence that true statistical inference is found outside of the great apes, and that aspects of domaingeneral thinking can convergently evolve in brains with a highly different structure from primates. When an agent shows a preference by consistently selecting a minority item from a population, infants integrate this knowledge into their sampling predictions and expect biased sampling in the future[33,34,35,36,37] These results suggest that infant statistical inference has three signatures: it uses relative frequencies (Signature 1) and is domain general, as infants can make predictions that integrate relative frequency judgements with information from both the physical domain (Signature 2) and the social domain (Signature 3). We examined whether the kea, a parrot species endemic to New Zealand, show three signatures of human statistical inference, using comparable tasks to those administered to infants[28,30,31,33] and primates[38,40,45,50]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
