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The possibility that variation in the propensity to forage innovatively is attributable to variation in cognition is a matter of debate. Motor flexibility and persistence offer alternative viewpoints. The present study used a computational model to evaluate the relative contribution of these mechanisms to the innovation process. We modeled the effects of low and high motor flexibility on problem-solving performance, which provided a baseline against which to examine how performance changed when combined with operant learning or persistence. We titrated our models through a wide range of parameter values in order to explore where in the outcome space biologically meaningful effect sizes are likely to be detected. The baseline model accurately reproduced an enhancement of performance when relative frequencies of motor expression were balanced (high motor flexibility) rather than skewed (low motor flexibility). Operant learning enhanced performance, but only when agents persisted until they solved and only when motor flexibility was low. In scenarios where agents gave up even if they had not solved, persistence in response to occurrence of secondary cues improved problem solving in both motor flexible and motor inflexible individuals. In scenarios, where the benefits of persistence and learning were compared directly, the benefits of persisting were typically equal, if not greater than those of learning. Given the high metabolic cost of neural tissue, our simulations predict that selection for enhanced problem solving should select for processes that increase persistence (e.g., personality changes) rather than learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociality is associated with a variety of costs and benefits, one of which can be to increase the likelihood of individuals solving novel problems. Several hypotheses explaining why groups show higher innovative problem-solving efficiencies than individuals alone have been proposed including the sharing of antipredator vigilance and the pool-of-competence effect, whereby larger groups containing a more diverse range of individuals are more likely to contain individuals with the skills necessary to solve the particular problem at hand. Interference between group members may cause groups to have lower problem solving abilities, however. Using a simulation approach, we model the shape of the relationship between group-level problem-solving probability and group size across a range of facilitation and inhibition scenarios, various population distributions of problem solving, and a task requiring 1 action or 2 actions to be solved. Simulations showed that both sharing of antipredator vigilance and the addition of competent individuals to an existing group lead to positive relationships between group-level problem solving and group size that reach 100% solving probability, whereas interference effects generate group-solving probabilities that rise to a maximum and decrease again, generating a group size for which problem solving is maximized. In contrast, both inhibition and facilitation scenarios generate identical patterns of individual efficiencies. Our results have important implications for our ability to understand the mechanisms that underpin group-size effects on problem solving in nonhumans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Behavioural innovations have become central to our thinking about how animals adjust to changing environments. It is now well established that animals vary in their ability to innovate, but understanding why remains a challenge. This is because innovations are rare, so studying innovation requires alternative experimental assays that create opportunities for animals to express their ability to invent new behaviours, or use pre-existing ones in new contexts. Problem solving of extractive foraging tasks has been put forward as a suitable experimental assay. We review the rapidly expanding literature on problem solving of extractive foraging tasks in order to better understand to what extent the processes underpinning problem solving, and the factors influencing problem solving, are in line with those predicted, and found, to underpin and influence innovation in the wild. Our aim is to determine whether problem solving can be used as an experimental proxy of innovation. We find that in most respects, problem solving is determined by the same underpinning mechanisms, and is influenced by the same factors, as those predicted to underpin, and to influence, innovation. We conclude that problem solving is a valid experimental assay for studying innovation, propose a conceptual model of problem solving in which motor diversity plays a more central role than has been considered to date, and provide recommendations for future research using problem solving to investigate innovation. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: Cognition in the wild. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foraging innovations are increasingly recognized as an important source of phenotypic plasticity, evolutionary change and adaptation to environmental challenges. One line of research has successfully demonstrated that innovation can represent a stable individual trait, but by the same token has shown strong contextual effects on innovation. We examined the effects of social context on innovative foraging behaviour. Across two separate experiments, we measured the individual propensity of Indian mynahs, Acridotheres tristis, to innovate when alone, in pairs, or in groups of five birds. Although innovators remained consistent in their relative innovation performance ranking (high, medium, low), the presence of one or more conspecifics reduced the likelihood of innovating, and increased innovation latencies, significantly relative to when individuals were tested alone. A neophobia test in which latency to forage was compared in both the absence and the presence of a novel object, in each of two social contexts (solitary versus social), showed that the presence of conspecifics caused mynahs to forage significantly faster in a safe situation (object absent) relative to when alone, but to delay foraging in a risky situation (object present). Together, these findings suggest that sociality can have contrasting effects on foraging in safe and risky situations, and, in some species at least, effects of sociality on innovative foraging may hence be more akin to those observed in the presence of risk. Negotiation over engaging with risks inherent to innovative foraging offered the most likely explanation for socially inhibited innovation behaviour, and may act to constrain the diffusion of innovations under some conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]