title: The domain specificity of intertemporal choice in pinyon jays.
abstract: When choosing between a piece of cake now versus a slimmer waistline in the future, many of us have difficulty with self-control. Food-caching species, however, regularly hide food for later recovery, sometimes waiting months before retrieving their caches. It remains unclear whether these long-term choices generalize outside of the caching domain. We hypothesized that the ability to save for the future is a general tendency that cuts across different situations. To test this hypothesis, we measured and experimentally manipulated caching to evaluate its relationship with operant measures of self-control in pinyon jays (Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus). We found no correlation between caching and self-control at the individual level, and experimentally increasing caching did not influence self-control. The self-control required for caching food, therefore, does not carry over to other foraging tasks, suggesting that it is domain specific in pinyon jays.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, USA. jeffrey.r.stevens@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Jeffrey R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Stevens
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, USA.
authors.forename: Bryce A
authors.initials: BA
authors.lastname: Kennedy
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, USA.
authors.forename: Dina
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Morales
authors.affiliation: School of Biological Sciences, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, USA.
authors.forename: Marianna
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Burks
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D002755:Choice Behavior; D003216:Conditioning, Operant; D005247:Feeding Behavior; D005260:Female; D005502:Food; D061353:Food Storage; D008297:Male; D046109:Passeriformes; D000068356:Self-Control
keywords: Caching; Delay choice task; Intertemporal choice; Pinyon jay