ReviewFrontiers in psychology2020
Validity of Cognitive Tests for Non-human Animals: Pitfalls and Prospects.
Review in Frontiers in psychology, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 26 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
26 citing papers in PubMed.
- Decision rules diverge between sympatric Featherfin cichlids despite shared preferences, ecology, and evolutionary history.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Brain structure and function in Homo naledi.Brain structure & function · 2026Review
- Cognitive Assessment for Neuropsychological Impairments in Dogs (CANID): An Efficient, Repeatable, and Sensitive Evaluation for Age-related Cognitive Dysfunction.Research square · 2026Article
- Unpacking response Inhibition in animals - part 2: an empirical test.Animal cognition · 2026Article
- Brokering peace in the ape (culture) wars.Evolutionary human sciences · 2026Article
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- Inhibitory control tests in non-human animals: validity, reliability, and perspectives.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2025Review
- Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) show an attentional bias toward a male secondary sexual trait.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2025Article
- Demonstrating the reproductive consequences of cognition: learning from experience.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Tolerant and despotic macaques show divergent temperament but similar theory of mind.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Social learning in dogs from an ecologically valid perspective.Biologia futura · 2025Review
- Common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus) excel in a one-trial spatial memory test, yet perform poorly in a classical memory task.Animal cognition · 2025Article
- Individual differences in sociocognitive traits in semi-free-ranging rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta).American journal of primatology · 2025Article
- Epistemic Curiosity in Kea Parrots and Human Children.Open mind : discoveries in cognitive science · 2025Article
- An Integrative Approach to the Study of Cognitive Abilities in a Non-Human Primate Model in a Virology Laboratory Environment.Brain sciences · 2024Article
- Tolerant macaque species are less impulsive and reactive.Animal cognition · 2023Article
- A Touchscreen-Based, Multiple-Choice Approach to Cognitive Enrichment of Captive Rhesus Macaques (Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2023Article
- Cognitive performance is linked to fitness in a wild primate.Science advances · 2023Article
- Human and chimpanzee shared and divergent neurobiological systems for general and specific cognitive brain functions.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Comparative psychology assesses cognitive abilities and capacities of non-human animals and humans. Based on performance differences and similarities in various species in cognitive tests, it is inferred how their minds work and reconstructed how cognition might have evolved. Critically, such species comparisons are only valid and meaningful if the tasks truly capture individual and inter-specific variation in cognitive abilities rather than contextual variables that might affect task performance. Unlike in human test psychology, however, cognitive tasks for non-human primates (and most other animals) have been rarely evaluated regarding their measurement validity. We review recent studies that address how non-cognitive factors affect performance in a set of commonly used cognitive tasks, and if cognitive tests truly measure individual variation in cognitive abilities. We find that individual differences in emotional and motivational factors primarily affect performance via attention. Hence, it is crucial to systematically control for attention during cognitive tasks to obtain valid and reliable results. Aspects of test design, however, can also have a substantial effect on cognitive performance. We conclude that non-cognitive factors are a minor source of measurement error if acknowledged and properly controlled for. It is essential, however, to validate and eventually re-design several primate cognition tasks in order to ascertain that they capture the cognitive abilities they were designed to measure. This will provide a more solid base for future cognitive comparisons within primates but also across a wider range of non-human animal species.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.