Evidence map›Paper›PMID 33290683›Full record

ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2020

How general is cognitive ability in non-human animals? A meta-analytical and multi-level reanalysis approach.

Marc-Antoine Poirier, Dovid Y Kozlovsky, Julie Morand-Ferron, Vincent Careau

Open access · bronzeAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
14citing papers in PubMed
6.3field-weighted citation impact, top 4% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

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.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

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.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

14 citing papers in PubMed, 33 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Article
  2. Modality-specific long-term memory enhancement inPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025
    Article
  3. The fish challenge to vertebrate cognitive evolution.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025
    Review
  4. Article
  5. Article
  6. Article
  7. Article
  8. Article
  9. Article
  10. Review
  11. Article
  12. Article
  13. Animal cognition in an urbanised world.Frontiers in ecology and evolution · 2021
    Article
  14. Geographic differences in individual recognition linked with social but not nonsocial cognition.Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology
    Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors at 1 institution in 2 countries.

Marc-Antoine PoirierDepartment of Biology, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Dovid Y KozlovskyDepartment of Biology, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Julie Morand-FerronDepartment of Biology, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Vincent CareauDepartment of Biology, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
University of Ottawa · CA

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

General intelligence has been a topic of high interest for over a century. Traditionally, research on general intelligence was based on principal component analyses and other dimensionality reduction approaches. The advent of high-speed computing has provided alternative statistical tools that have been used to test predictions of human general intelligence. In comparison, research on general intelligence in non-human animals is in its infancy and still relies mostly on factor-analytical procedures. Here, we argue that dimensionality reduction, when incorrectly applied, can lead to spurious results and limit our understanding of ecological and evolutionary causes of variation in animal cognition. Using a meta-analytical approach, we show, based on 555 bivariate correlations, that the average correlation among cognitive abilities is low (

Indexed as

CognitionModels, TheoreticalAnimalsIntelligencePrincipal Component AnalysiscognitiongG × E interactionmixed modelsmulti-level modelsPCA

Identifiers

PMID33290683
PMCPMC7739923
OpenAlexW3110978131

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

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.