Social influences on delayed gratification in New Caledonian crows and Eurasian jays
Miller, Rachael (University of Cambridge)
Davies, James R (University of Cambridge)
Schiestl, Martina (University of Veterinary Science)
Garcia Pelegrin, Elias (National University of Singapore)
Gray, Russell D (Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History)
Taylor, Alex (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Psicobiologia i de Metodologia de les Ciències de la Salut)
Clayton, Nicola S (University of Cambridge)

Data:	2023
Resum:	Self-control underlies goal-directed behaviour in humans and other animals. Delayed gratification - a measure of self-control - requires the ability to tolerate delays and/or invest more effort to obtain a reward of higher value over one of lower value, such as food or mates. Social context, in particular, the presence of competitors, may influence delayed gratification. We adapted the 'rotating-tray' paradigm, where subjects need to forgo an immediate, lower-quality (i. e. less preferred) reward for a delayed, higher-quality (i. e. more preferred) one, to test social influences on delayed gratification in two corvid species: New Caledonian crows and Eurasian jays. We compared choices for immediate vs. delayed rewards while alone, in the presence of a competitive conspecific and in the presence of a non-competitive conspecific. We predicted that, given the increased risk of losing a reward with a competitor present, both species would similarly, flexibly alter their choices in the presence of a conspecific compared to when alone. We found that species differed: jays were more likely to select the immediate, less preferred reward than the crows. We also found that jays were more likely to select the immediate, less preferred reward when a competitor or non-competitor was present than when alone, or when a competitor was present compared to a non-competitor, while the crows selected the delayed, highly preferred reward irrespective of social presence. We discuss our findings in relation to species differences in socio-ecological factors related to adult sociality and food-caching (storing). New Caledonian crows are more socially tolerant and moderate cachers, while Eurasian jays are highly territorial and intense cachers that may have evolved under the social context of cache pilfering and cache protection strategies. Therefore, flexibility (or inflexibility) in delay of gratification under different social contexts may relate to the species' social tolerance and related risk of competition.
Drets:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Llengua:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Publicat a:	PloS one, Vol. 18, Num. 12 (December 2023) , art. e0289197, ISSN 1932-6203

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0289197
PMID: 38055711

17 p, 942.1 KB

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