Cauchoix, Chow, van Horik et al.

To further our understanding of the evolution of cognition we gathered 44 datasets of 26 species and used meta-analysis to evaluate whether cognitive performance is repeatable across taxa. We assessed individual repeatability in performance on the same task presented at different time intervals (Temporal Repeatability), and on different tasks that measure the same putative cognitive ability (Contextual Repeatability). We found support for both temporal and contextual repeatability of individual variation in cognitive performance, with significant mean R estimates ranging between 0.15 and 0.28. Our overall findings highlight the widespread occurrence of consistent inter-individual variation in cognition.