title: Symbol-value association and discrimination in the archerfish.
abstract: One of the most important aspects of mathematical cognition in humans is the ability to symbolically represent magnitudes and quantities. In the last 20 years it has been shown that not only humans but also other primates, birds and dolphins can use symbolic representation of quantities. However, it remains unclear to what extent this ability is spread across the animal kingdom. Here, by training archerfish to associate variable amounts of rewards with different geometric shapes, we show for the first time that lower vertebrates can also associate a value with a symbol and make a decision that maximizes their food intake based on this information. In addition, the archerfish is able to understand up to four different quantities and organize them mentally in an ordinal manner, similar to observations in higher vertebrates. These findings point in the direction of the existence of an approximate magnitude system in fish.
authors.affiliation: Life Sciences Department and Zlotowski Center for Neuroscience, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel.
authors.forename: Naomi
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Karoubi
authors.affiliation: Psychology Department and the Brain and Mind Institute, The University of Western Ontario, London, Canada.
authors.forename: Tali
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Leibovich
authors.affiliation: Life Sciences Department and Zlotowski Center for Neuroscience, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel.
authors.forename: Ronen
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Segev
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002755:Choice Behavior / Q000502:physiology; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D005399:Fishes / Q000502:physiology*; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology; D008433:Mathematics / Q000379:methods; D012201:Reward