Are cognition and personality related in budgerigars?

Abstract

In recent years, researchers have been attempting to relate differences in personality (e.g., boldness, aggressiveness, exploration tendency) to variation in cognition (performances in tasks that require learning, reasoning, attention, or memory, etc.) both theoretically and empirically. However, it is unclear on what basis personality and cognition might be associated with each other. Previous theory suggests a connection between fast-slow personality types and cognitive speed-accuracy tradeoffs. In this study, we tested this hypothesis in budgerigars and found that, in their 1st associative learning, birds with fast personality (less fearful of handling stress) were fast learners in the beginning, while slow personality individuals improved faster, but both types of birds did not differ in accuracy. However, these relationships were context-dependent. No significant relationship was found in subsequent learning tasks (reversal learning and a 2nd associative learning) in the familiar context (task setup and apparatus similar to the 1st associative learning). We then conducted a problem-solving experiment with novel setup and apparatus to test 1 possible explanation that the association between personality and cognition in the 1st associative learning might be caused by noncognitive constraint, such as fearfulness when facing novel task setup and apparatus. We found that fast individuals interacted more with the problem box and solved it, whereas the slow birds were not. We suggest that personalities can influence cognitive performances and trigger a cognitive speed-improvement tradeoff under the novel context. However, there are no consistent cognitive styles that co-varied with different personalities.

Keywords: budgerigar; cognition; learning accuracy; learning speed; personality.

Figure 1.

Apparatuses in the exploratory tendency test and problem-solving task. On the left, (A and B) the top view of the maze used in the exploration test. On the right, (C and D) the problem-solving box (the front and side views are shown in C).

Figure 2.

Learning curves of individual birds in different learning tasks (A-C, 1^st associative learning, reversal learning and 2^nd associative learning respectively). Fitted curves were obtained by logistic regression models based on the responses to the learning trials and the distributions of these responses. Different color lines represent different individuals, describing the learning tendencies of individuals in the tasks and predicting the probabilities of successful choice at certain trials.

Figure 3.

Relationships between breathing rate (time/minute, score indicating fearfulness of individual to handling stress) and cognitive performances across different learning tasks. (A–C) Relationships between fearfulness and initial learning speed. (D–F) Relationships between fearfulness and improving rate. (G–I) Relationships between fearfulness and final accuracy. (J–L) Relationships between fearfulness and total accuracy. Oblique lines (computed by simple linear regressions) indicate that fearfulness significantly predicts the cognitive traits (P < 0.05). All N = 21.

Figure 4.

Breathing rate (fearfulness scores) of solver and nonsolver individuals in the spontaneous problem-solving task. *Significant difference (P < 0.05), N = 21.

Figure 5.

Hypothesized relationships between cognition and personality. It shows the relationships that are supported and not supported (crossed paths) by the results of this study. We suggest that personalities can influence cognitive performances only under the context involving risk evaluation and there are no consistent cognitive performances linked to different personalities.