Comparing inhibitory control across fishes
Category
Business, Education and Humanities
Department
Psychology
Student Status
Undergraduate
Research Advisor
Dr. Laurent Prétôt
Document Type
Event
Location
Student Center Ballroom
Start Date
10-4-2025 2:00 PM
End Date
10-4-2025 4:00 PM
Description
The ability to suppress predispositions in favor of more appropriate actions, also known as inhibitory control, helps organisms cope with fluctuating environments and is considered a central component of executive functioning. A common test of inhibitory control in animals is the "cylinder" task, in which a subject must detour a transparent cylinder to reach a food reward through side openings, instead of directly reaching for it and bumping into the front of the cylinder (which is regarded as an inhibitory failure). Here, we tested parrotfish-an understudied group of marine herbivores that inhabit coral reefs and seagrass-in a standardized version of the task. As a group, parrotfish performed poorly, failing to retrieve the food without touching the cylinder first in most trials (94%; two-tailed binomial test, N = 9, P < 0.001). We compared our results with those of Lamarck's angelfish-an omnivorous coral reef fish previously tested in the same procedure. We found that parrotfish showed a tendency towards failing more often than angelfish (two-tailed Fisher's exact test, P = 0.075). When examining whether success or failure in the task was associated with decision making, however, we found that parrotfish were more likely to make a choice in the task, regardless of the outcome (two-tailed Fisher's exact test, 90% vs. 70%; P = 0.002). We discuss the implications of these findings for our understanding of fish inhibitory control and, more broadly, the field of fish comparative cognition.
Comparing inhibitory control across fishes
Student Center Ballroom
The ability to suppress predispositions in favor of more appropriate actions, also known as inhibitory control, helps organisms cope with fluctuating environments and is considered a central component of executive functioning. A common test of inhibitory control in animals is the "cylinder" task, in which a subject must detour a transparent cylinder to reach a food reward through side openings, instead of directly reaching for it and bumping into the front of the cylinder (which is regarded as an inhibitory failure). Here, we tested parrotfish-an understudied group of marine herbivores that inhabit coral reefs and seagrass-in a standardized version of the task. As a group, parrotfish performed poorly, failing to retrieve the food without touching the cylinder first in most trials (94%; two-tailed binomial test, N = 9, P < 0.001). We compared our results with those of Lamarck's angelfish-an omnivorous coral reef fish previously tested in the same procedure. We found that parrotfish showed a tendency towards failing more often than angelfish (two-tailed Fisher's exact test, P = 0.075). When examining whether success or failure in the task was associated with decision making, however, we found that parrotfish were more likely to make a choice in the task, regardless of the outcome (two-tailed Fisher's exact test, 90% vs. 70%; P = 0.002). We discuss the implications of these findings for our understanding of fish inhibitory control and, more broadly, the field of fish comparative cognition.
