Toward wild psychometrics: linking individual cognitive differences to fitness
Toward wild psychometrics: linking individual cognitive differences to fitness
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DOI：
10.1093/beheco/aru095
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发表时间：
2014-06
影响因子：
2.4
通讯作者：
Alex Thornton;J. Isden;J. Madden
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Alex Thornton;J. Isden;J. Madden
近年来，我们对动物认知过程的理解有了很大的提高，但我们对认知特征是如何进化的仍然知之甚少。按照达尔文的逻辑，要理解选择如何作用于这些特征，我们必须确定它们是否在个体之间存在差异，影响适应性，并且是可遗传的。最近的一些研究已经开始探索自然条件下个体认知表现的变化与健康之间的关系。这项工作有很大的希望，但它的成功取决于对个体之间认知差异的准确描述和量化。现有的研究通常采用“解决问题”的方法，假设完成新任务的个体比那些没有完成的个体具有更大的认知能力。我们认为，这种方法是无法确定，个体差异是由于认知因素。我们建议通过心理接地的心理测试，并讨论了必要的标准，以检查在野外的认知变化的健身后果。
Our understanding of the processes underlying animal cognition has improved dramatically in recent years, but we still know little about how cognitive traits evolve. Following Darwinian logic, to understand how selection acts on such traits we must determine whether they vary between individuals, influence fitness, and are heritable. A handful of recent studies have begun to explore the relationship between variation in individual cognitive performance and fitness under natural conditions. Such work holds great promise, but its success is contingent on accurate characterization and quantification of the cognitive differences between individuals. Existing research has typically adopted a "problem-solving" approach, assuming that individuals that complete novel tasks have greater cognitive prowess than those that do not. We argue that this approach is incapable of determining that individual differences are due to cognitive factors. We propose the adoption of psychologically grounded psychometric testing and discuss the criteria necessary to examine the fitness consequences of cognitive variation in the wild.