Intra-individual variation in cognitive abilities has been widely reported in animals. Recent studies have found that individual cognitive performance varies with personality traits in a wide range of animal taxa, with a speed-accuracy trade-off between cognition and personality traits. Few studies investigated whether these relationships change depending on different contexts. Here we investigate whether the personality trait (as measured by exploratory behavior in a novel environment) is associated with cognition (novel skill learning and spatial memory) in wild male chestnut thrushes Turdus rubrocanus. Using an experimental novel skill learning task set-up, we found that fast-exploring individuals explored the experimental device (a cardboard with eight opaque cups) sooner than slow-exploring individuals. Exploratory behavior was not associated with individual spatial memory performances or an individual ’s capacity to learn the novel skill. Learning speed was positively associated with the difficulty of learning phases, and fast-exploring individuals used less trials to meet the learning criterion. In addition, fast-exploring individuals took less time to complete the 24-hour spatial memory test, but the accuracy of the test was not significantly different between individuals who were more or less exploratory. We suggest that variation in personality traits associates with individual learning speed in cognitive tasks, and that this relationship is context-dependent.

中文翻译：

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雄性栗鸫的探索行为与认知速度相关

动物中认知能力的个体差异已被广泛报道。最近的研究发现，在多种动物分类群中，个体认知表现随性格特征而变化，认知和性格特征之间存在速度与准确度的权衡。很少有研究调查这些关系是否会根据不同的背景而变化。在这里，我们研究了野生雄性栗鸫 Turdus rubrocanus 的人格特质（通过在新环境中的探索行为来衡量）是否与认知（新技能学习和空间记忆）相关。使用实验性新颖的技能学习任务设置，我们发现快速探索的个体比缓慢探索的个体更快地探索实验设备（带有八个不透明杯子的纸板）。探索行为与个人空间记忆表现或个人学习新技能的能力无关。学习速度与学习阶段的难度呈正相关，快速探索的个体使用较少的尝试来满足学习标准。此外，快速探索的个体完成24小时空间记忆测试所需的时间较少，但测试的准确性在或多或少探索的个体之间没有显着差异。我们认为人格特质的变化与认知任务中的个体学习速度相关，并且这种关系是依赖于环境的。