ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2018
Comparative psychometrics: establishing what differs is central to understanding what evolves.
Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 40 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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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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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
40 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- The repeatability of cognitive performance: a meta-analysis.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2018Pooled it
- The recoverability, reliability, and generalizability of reward processing parameters and relation to mental health symptoms.Psychological medicine · 2026Article
- Exploring the relationship between inhibitory control and coping behaviour in horses.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- EVApeCognition: An 18-Year Dataset of Great Ape Cognition.Scientific data · 2026Article
- Inhibitory Control, Shifting, and Working Memory Updating Domains form Cognitive Phenotypes in Non-human Primates.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Behavioural manifestations of human-directed social motivation in dogs.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Unpacking response inhibition in animals - part 1: a conceptual framework.Animal cognition · 2026Article
- Article
- Smart Ungulates: What Sheep and Goats' Performances in a Reversed-Reward Contingency Task Tell Us About the Evolution of Cognitive Flexibility.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Does the Post-Natal Social Environment Influence Cognitive Development in a Social Gecko?Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Individual differences in sociocognitive traits in semi-free-ranging rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta).American journal of primatology · 2025Article
- Individual differences in sociocognitive traits in semi-free-ranging rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta).American journal of primatology · 2025Article
- Measuring self-control in a wild songbird using a spatial discounting task.Animal cognition · 2024Article
- Inhibitory control in teleost fish: a methodological and conceptual review.Animal cognition · 2024Review
- Repeatability and heritability of inhibitory control performance in wild toutouwai (Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- Individual consistency in the learning abilities of honey bees: cognitive specialization within sensory and reinforcement modalities.Animal cognition · 2023Article
- Repeated testing does not confound cognitive performance in the Western Australian magpie (Cracticus tibicen dorsalis).Animal cognition · 2023Article
- The shifting shelf task: a new, non-verbal measure for attentional set shifting.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Article
- The Evolution of Cognitive Control in Lemurs.Psychological science · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Cognitive abilities cannot be measured directly. What we can measure is individual variation in task performance. In this paper, we first make the case for why we should be interested in mapping individual differences in task performance onto particular cognitive abilities: we suggest that it is crucial for examining the causes and consequences of variation both within and between species. As a case study, we examine whether multiple measures of inhibitory control for non-human animals do indeed produce correlated task performance; however, no clear pattern emerges that would support the notion of a common cognitive ability underpinning individual differences in performance. We advocate a psychometric approach involving a three-step programme to make theoretical and empirical progress: first, we need tasks that reveal signature limits in performance. Second, we need to assess the reliability of individual differences in task performance. Third, multi-trait multi-method test batteries will be instrumental in validating cognitive abilities. Together, these steps will help us to establish what varies between individuals that could impact their fitness and ultimately shape the course of the evolution of animal minds. Finally, we propose executive functions, including working memory, inhibitory control and attentional shifting, as a sensible starting point for this endeavour.This article is part of the theme issue 'Causes and consequences of individual differences in cognitive abilities'.
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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 OpenQuestion graph.