Testing the greater male variability hypothesis: male mountain chickadees exhibit larger variation in reversal learning compared to females

The ‘greater male variability hypothesis’ predicts that males exhibit larger ranges of variation in cognitive performance compared to females, however, support for this hypothesis has come exclusively from studies of humans. This scenario aligns with the fact that the vast majority of the literature assessing sex differences in cognition is based on studies of humans and a few other mammals. In order to elucidate the underpinnings of cognitive variation and the potential for fitness consequences, we must investigate sex differences in cognition in non-mammalian systems as well. Here we assess the performance of male and female food-caching birds on a spatial learning and memory task and a reversal spatial task to address whether there are sex differences in mean cognitive performance or in the range of variation in performance. For both tasks, male and female mean performance was similar across four years of testing; however, males did exhibit a wider range of variation in performance o...

'男性更大变异性假说'（greater male variability hypothesis）预测，与雌性相比，雄性在认知表现上的变异范围更大；然而，支持这一假说的证据完全来自人类研究。这种情况与以下事实一致：绝大多数评估认知性别差异的文献均基于人类及少数其他哺乳动物的研究。为阐明认知变异的内在机制及适应度后果的可能性，我们也必须探究非哺乳类系统中的认知性别差异。在此，我们评估了雄性和雌性储食鸟类（food-caching birds）在空间学习记忆任务和空间反转任务中的表现，以探究平均认知表现或表现变异范围是否存在性别差异。在四年的测试中，两种任务下雌雄的平均表现相似；然而，雄性确实表现出更广泛的表现变异范围……