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The ability of nervous systems to filter out irrelevant and repetitive stimuli may prevent animals from becoming 'saturated' with excess information. However, animals must be particular about which stimuli to attend to and which to ignore, as mistakes may be costly. Using a comparative approach, we explored the effect of interstimulus interval (ISI) between repeated presentations of visual stimuli presented on a screen to test the decrease in responses (response decrement) of both Trite planiceps jumping spiders and untrained Columba livia pigeons, animals with comparable visual ability despite having structurally different visual systems and brain size. We used ISIs of 2.5 s, 5 s, 10 s, predicting that decreases in ISI would lead to progressively less responses to the stimuli. Following from previous work on T. planiceps, we also manipulated pigeon hunger level, finding that hungry birds were initially more responsive than sated pigeons, but the rate of decrease in responses to the stimulus did not differ between the two groups. While a clear response decrement was seen in both species across all conditions, shorter ISIs resulted in more dramatic response decrements, aligning with previous work and with the resource depletion theory posited in the human-based literature., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no competing interests., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Highlights • We tested the effect of inter-stimulus-interval (ISI) on response decrement (RD). • We studied repeated visual stimuli in Trite planiceps jumping spiders. • Shorter ISI resulted in a faster and more sustained drop in responses. • Overall, our work suggests that the RD of Trite is not simple sensory habituation. • We suggest that RD in jumping spiders is likely mediated by more central processes. Abstract The inability to maintain signal detection performance with time on task, or response decrement, has been widely studied. In animals with small brains, the ability to filter out repetitive, irrelevant stimuli may prevent the nervous system from being saturated with information. However, animals must be particular to which stimuli they attend and those to ignore, as mistakes may be costly. We explored the effect of inter-stimulus interval (ISI) between repeated presentations of a visual stimulus on the response decrement of the jumping spider Trite planiceps. Jumping spiders are active visual hunters, and moving visual stimuli trigger a readily observable optomotor response. We used either an ISI of 10 or 20 s between 160 stimulus presentations, predicting that a shorter ISI would result in a steeper decrement through cognitive overstimulation, according to the resource depletion theory. While a clear response decrement was seen for both conditions, the shorter ISI resulted in a more dramatic response decrement, aligning with the resource depletion theory posited in the human-based literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]