Psychology, Department of
ORCID IDs
0000-0002-3088-6936
0000-0001-8116-9913
0000-0003-0207-5615
0000-0001-5499-4168
0000-0001-7595-662X
0000-0002-2504-0338
0000-0001-6381-0375
0000-0003-3127-5536
0000-0003-2375-1360
0000-0002-9319-6991
0000-0001-5363-753X
0000-0002-4362-5989
Date of this Version
2022
Document Type
Article
Citation
Bryer, M. A. H., Koopman, S. E., Cantlon, J. F., Piantadosi, S. T., MacLean, E. L., Baker, J. M., Beran, M. J., Jones, S. M., Jordan, K. E., Mahamane, S., Nieder, A., Perdue, B. M., Range, F., Stevens, J. R., Tomonaga, M., Ujfalussy, D. J., & Vonk, J. (2022). The evolution of quantitative sensitivity. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 377(1844), 20200529. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2020.0529
Abstract
The ability to represent approximate quantities appears to be phylogenetically widespread, but the selective pressures and proximate mechanisms favouring this ability remain unknown. We analysed quantity discrimination data from 672 subjects across 33 bird and mammal species, using a novel Bayesian model that combined phylogenetic regression with a model of number psychophysics and random effect components. This allowed us to combine data from 49 studies and calculate the Weber fraction (a measure of quantity representation precision) for each species. We then examined which cognitive, socioecological and biological factors were related to variance in Weber fraction. We found contributions of phylogeny to quantity discrimination performance across taxa. Of the neural, socioecological and general cognitive factors we tested, cortical neuron density and domain-general cognition were the strongest predictors of Weber fraction, controlling for phylogeny. Our study is a new demonstration of evolutionary constraints on cognition, as well as of a relation between species-specific neuron density and a particular cognitive ability. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Systems neuroscience through the lens of evolutionary theory’.
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Behavior and Ethology Commons, Biological Psychology Commons, Cognition and Perception Commons, Cognitive Psychology Commons