Intelligence demands flexibility: Individual differences in attentional disengagement strongly predict the general cognitive ability of mice

Differential and Experimental Approaches to Studying Intelligence in Humans and Non-Human Animals

“…This pattern of results is particularly exciting, because it aligns with research on humans demonstrating that older adults exhibit deficits in cognitive control functions, including attention control (Braver & Barch, 2002). Crawford et al's (2020) results suggest that cognitive aging in mice is related to deficits in disengaging from previously learned behavioral tendencies. Taken together, research using the modified Stroop paradigm has revealed that similar and homologous tasks can be used to measure attention control in mice and humans, with results that are broadly consistent across species.…”

“…This extreme-groups design revealed significant differences in performance on Lashley maze reversal trials (Figure 7), suggesting that mice with greater general ability were better able to control attention in service of task performance. Whereas the Lashley maze reversal trials Crawford et al (2020) used to measure attention control in mice tapped disengagement from no-longer-relevant information, a study by Kolata et al (2005) revealed a similar pattern of results using a test that tapped information maintenance amidst interference. Similar to a complex span test administered to humans, the mice were challenged to navigate two radial-arm mazes in alternating order.…”

“…This ensures that most of the variability across individuals is attributable to genetic influences, which is particularly useful for behavioral genetic research (see, e.g., Kolata et al, 2010). The mice in these studies are genetically heterogeneous, and although they are laboratory bred, they exhibit similar levels of genetic variation to wild mouse populations (Crawford et al, 2020;Aldinger et al, 2009). Genetic variation is important, because individual differences arise from the joint product of genes and the environment (Plomin, 2017)-in the absence of genetic differences, there would be little to no variation across individuals to observe.…”

“…Many of the intelligence tests used for mice assess route learning ability or problem solving using maze tasks or puzzles. As one example, in the Lashley maze task (Figure 6a), the mouse must efficiently navigate a maze from a start box to a goal area containing a food reward (Crawford et al, 2020). After completing a few practice trials, the measure of performance is the number of navigational errors made en route to the food.…”

General Cognitive Ability Predicts Survival-Readiness in Genetically Heterogeneous Laboratory Mice

“…The battery of cognitive tests employed here to assess general cognitive ability is somewhat different in nature than batteries that have been previously used in our laboratory, and notably, the performance in all of the cognitive tests in the current battery was motivated by food deprivation (whereas in prior batteries, several different motivational states were represented). It should be noted, however, that the current battery was compared to prior batteries and it was determined that the amount of cognitive variance accounted for by the present battery of tests was comparable in magnitude and structure to what has previously been reported (Crawford et al, 2020).…”