Abstract
Mirror tasks can be used to investigate whether animals can instrumentally use a mirror to solve problems and can understand the correspondence between reflections and the real objects they represent. Two bird species, a corvid (New Caledonian crow) and a parrot (African grey parrot), have demonstrated the ability to use mirrors instrumentally in mirror-mediated spatial locating tasks. However, they have not been challenged with a mirror-guided reaching task, which involves a more complex understanding of the mirror’s properties. In the present study, a task approximating the mirror-guided reaching task used in primate studies was adapted for, and given to, a corvid species (Eurasian jay) using a horizontal string-pulling paradigm. Four birds learned to pull the correct string to retrieve a food reward when they could see the food directly, whereas none used the reflected information to accomplish the same objective. Based on these results, it cannot be concluded whether these birds understand the correspondence between the location of the reward and its reflected information, or if the relative lack of visual-perceptual motor feedback given by the setup interfered with their performance. This novel task is posited to be conceptually more difficult compared to mirror-mediated spatial locating tasks, and should be used in avian species that have previously been successful at using the mirror instrumentally. This would establish whether these species can still succeed at it, and thus whether the task does indeed pose additional cognitive demands.
Highlights
Mirrors are a standard tool in comparative cognition: they are used to investigate both mirror self-recognition (MSR) and how non-human animals process mirrored information to accomplish tasks like object manipulation and to obtain
Animal Cognition the mark test, to investigate whether general difficulties in processing mirrored information can explain these negative results. Such instrumental mirror use tasks can be categorised into four types: mirror-triggered search, mirror-mediated object discrimination, mirror-mediated spatial locating, and mirror-guided reaching (Menzel et al 1985; Povinelli 1989; Pepperberg et al 1995)
In mirror-triggered search, the mirror is a cue to trigger searching behaviour, for either a food item or a positively rewarded stimulus (Anderson 1986; Povinelli 1989; Pepperberg et al 1995; Broom et al 2009; Howell and Bennett 2011; Gieling et al 2014; Wang et al 2020b); for instance, a location that is only visible with the use of a mirror may be baited with a food reward, and what is observed is whether a subject looks for the food reward in real space after only seeing its reflection
Summary
Mirrors are a standard tool in comparative cognition: they are used to investigate both mirror self-recognition (MSR) and how non-human animals process mirrored information to accomplish tasks like object manipulation and to obtainLuigi Baciadonna and Francesca M. In the case of mirror-guided reaching, the individual should be able to monitor its own movements and the movement of objects, as reflected by the mirror, moment by moment (Menzel et al 1985; Anderson 1986; Itakura 1987; Povinelli 1989) These different types of mirror tasks require processing mirrored information at different levels, and form a valuable and standardised way to compare performance across different species (Pepperberg et al 1995)
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