Decision-Making in the Wild: Urgency and Complexity Drive Feeding Decision Speed and the Likelihood of Revising a Choice in a Sex-Dependent Manner in Great Tit (Parus major) Parents.

parents addresses this issue. Decision speed was impacted by whether parents chose to feed a typically preferred chick, offspring starvation risk, decision complexity, and parental sex. Parents regularly moved food between chicks before committing, suggesting that parents perhaps were not confident in their initial decision, had made a mistake, were continuing to collect evidence, or could not execute their initial decision. Such decision changes were predicted by similar factors as speed. After moving food, parents were more likely to continue gathering evidence after their decision, and their next decision was slower. These results demonstrate several factors impacting cognition, and perhaps metacognition, in wild birds. More broadly, our study demonstrates how crucial evolutionarily relevant experiments in natural settings are.