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In human psychological research, personality traits as well as cognitive traits are usually validated for both, their stability over time and contexts. While stability over time gives an estimate on how genetically fixated a trait can be, correlations across traits have the power to reveal linkages or trade - offs. In animals, these validations have widely been done for personality but not for cognitive traits. We tested guinea pigs in four consecutive discrimination tasks using four unique pairs of objects with two objects of the same form but different size in each pair. The same animals were tested twice each for three personality traits, i.e. boldness, aggression and sociopositive behaviour. The animals did not learn to "always choose the larger item" in the cognitive task but learned to discriminate the two objects of each stimulus pair anew, so that we did test for learning speed in four slightly different task setups. Performance over the four tasks was significantly repeatable as well as all tested personality traits. A stable linkage over time was found between sociopositive behaviour and learning performance, probably indicating an ecological relevance for a correlation between these two traits. Still, not all traits seem to be connected amongst each other, as in our case boldness and aggression are both not linked to individual learning performance. Future studies will hopefully further investigate the repeatability of various cognitive traits in several species and thus lead to a better understanding of the interdependence of personality and cognition. This will help to unravel which suites of traits facilitate individual life histories and hence improve our understanding of the emergence and maintenance of individual differences., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

The evolution and maintenance of consistent individual differences, so called animal personalities, have attracted much research interest over the past decades. Variation along common personality traits, such as boldness or exploration, is often associated with risk-reward trade-offs. Individuals that are bolder and hence take more risks may be more successful in acquiring resources over the short term. Cautious individuals taking fewer risks may, on the other hand, live longer, but may also gather fewer resources over the short term. According to recent theory, individual differences in personality may be functionally related to individual differences in cognitive performance (i.e., the way in which individuals acquire or use information). Individual differences in the acquisition speed of cognitively challenging tasks are often associated with a speed-accuracy trade-off. Accuracy can be improved by investing more time in the decision-making process or, conversely, decisions can be made more quickly at the cost of making more mistakes. Hence, the speed-accuracy trade-off often involves a risk-reward trade-off. We tested whether 3 personality traits, boldness, activity, and aggressiveness, are correlated with individual learning, associative learning speed, and behavioral flexibility as assessed by reversal learning in wild cavies (Cavia aperea). We found strong positive relationships between all personality traits and learning speed, whereas flexibility was negatively associated with aggressiveness. Our results support the hypothesis that performance reflects individual differences in personality in a predictable way., (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved.)

Individuals within species differ consistently in their behaviour. Such individual differences may represent adaptations. Recently, researchers have started to implement the same adaptive framework to individual differences in cognition, leading to the suggestion that personality and cognition should covary. To determine the contextual consistency of cognitive traits and their covariation with several personality traits, 24 guinea pigs, Cavia aperea f. porcellus , were tested using a battery of 12 cognitive tests. Four tests each were conducted to test for problem solving, association learning and social learning. We assessed consistency within each of these three domains and tested for cognitive and behavioural syndromes between domains. Problem solving and social learning were consistent across contexts and positively correlated with each other. In addition, both correlated positively with boldness, and problem solving showed a negative correlation with aggressiveness and sociopositive behaviour. Association learning was neither consistent nor correlated with personality or performance in the other cognition tasks. We showed contextual consistency of two cognitive traits and found multiple links to personality traits that were predicted by recent theory. Surprisingly, associative learning was not consistent, demonstrating the importance of testing the relation between personality and multiple cognitive traits to increase our understanding of individual variation in cognition and personality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]