Sleep disturbance in people living with dementia or mild cognitive impairment: a realist review of general practice.

BACKGROUND: Sleep disturbance is a prevalent condition among people living with dementia (PLwD) or mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Its assessment and management within primary care is complex because of the comorbidities, older age, and cognitive impairment typical of this patient group. AIM: To explore how primary care clinicians assess, understand, and manage sleep disturbance for PLwD or MCI; if and why such initiatives work; and how people and their carers experience sleep disturbance and its treatment. DESIGN AND SETTING: A realist review of existing literature conducted in 2022. METHOD: Six bibliographic databases were searched. Context-mechanism-outcome configurations (CMOCs) were developed and refined. RESULTS: In total, 60 records were included from 1869 retrieved hits and 19 CMOCs were developed. Low awareness of and confidence in the treatment of sleep disturbance among primary care clinicians and patients, combined with time and resource constraints, meant that identifying sleep disturbance was difficult and not prioritised. Medication was perceived by clinicians and patients as the primary management tool, resulting in inappropriate or long-term prescription. Rigid nursing routines in care homes were reportedly not conducive to good-quality sleep. CONCLUSION: In primary care, sleep disturbance among PLwD or MCI is not adequately addressed. Over-reliance on medication, underutilisation of non-pharmacological strategies, and inflexible care home routines were reported as a result of low confidence in sleep management and resource constraints. This does not constitute effective and person-centred care. Future work should consider ways to tailor the assessment and management of sleep disturbance to the needs of individuals and their informal carers without overstretching services.

What really is nontokenistic fully inclusive patient and public involvement/engagement in research?

Patient and public involvement and engagement (PPIE) is critically important in healthcare research. A useful starting point for researchers to understand the scope of PPIE is to review the definition from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) as, 'research being carried out "with" or "by" members of the public rather than "to", "about" or "for" them'. PPIE does not refer to participation in research, but to actively shaping its direction. The 'Effectiveness of a decision support tool to optimise community-based tailored management of sleep for people living with dementia or mild cognitive impairment (TIMES)' study is funded through the NIHR programme grant for applied research. TIMES has thoroughly embraced PPIE by ensuring the person's voice is heard, understood, and valued. This editorial showcases how the TIMES project maximised inclusivity, and we share our experiences and top tips for other researchers. We base our reflections on the six key UK standards for public involvement; Inclusive Opportunities, Working Together, Support and Learning, Communications, Impact and Governance. We present our work, which had been co-led by our PPIE leads, academics and partners including, together in dementia everyday, Innovations in Dementia, The UK Network of Dementia Voices (Dementia Engagement & Empowerment Project) and Liverpool Chinese Wellbeing. We have a Lived Experience Advisory Forum on Sleep, which includes people with dementia, family carers, representatives of the South Asian Community and the Chinese community.

Dyadic perspectives on loneliness and social isolation among people with dementia and spousal carers: findings from the IDEAL programme.

OBJECTIVES: This study aims to investigate the impact of self and partner experiences of loneliness and social isolation on life satisfaction in people with dementia and their spousal carers. METHODS: We used data from 1042 dementia caregiving dyads in the Improving the experience of Dementia and Enhancing Active Life (IDEAL) programme cohort. Loneliness was measured using the six-item De Jong Gierveld loneliness scale and social isolation using the six-item Lubben Social Network Scale. Data were analysed using the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model framework. RESULTS: Self-rated loneliness was associated with poorer life satisfaction for both people with dementia and carers. The initial partner effects observed between the loneliness of the carer and the life satisfaction of the person with dementia and between social isolation reported by the person with dementia and life satisfaction of the carer were reduced to nonsignificance once the quality of the relationship between them was considered. DISCUSSION: Experiencing greater loneliness and social isolation is linked with reduced life satisfaction for people with dementia and carers. However, having a positive view of the quality of the relationship between them reduced the impact of loneliness and social isolation on life satisfaction. Findings suggest the need to consider the experiences of both the person with dementia and the carer when investigating the impact of loneliness and social isolation. Individual interventions to mitigate loneliness or isolation may enhance life satisfaction for both partners and not simply the intervention recipient.

Spatial memory predicts home range size and predation risk in pheasants.

Most animals confine their activities to a discrete home range, long assumed to reflect the fitness benefits of obtaining spatial knowledge about the landscape. However, few empirical studies have linked spatial memory to home range development or determined how selection operates on spatial memory via the latter's role in mediating space use. We assayed the cognitive ability of juvenile pheasants (Phasianus colchicus) reared under identical conditions before releasing them into the wild. Then, we used high-throughput tracking to record their movements as they developed their home ranges, and determined the location, timing and cause of mortality events. Individuals with greater spatial reference memory developed larger home ranges. Mortality risk from predators was highest at the periphery of an individual's home range in areas where they had less experience and opportunity to obtain spatial information. Predation risk was lower in individuals with greater spatial memory and larger core home ranges, suggesting selection may operate on spatial memory by increasing the ability to learn about predation risk across the landscape. Our results reveal that spatial memory, determined from abstract cognitive assays, shapes home range development and variation, and suggests predation risk selects for spatial memory via experience-dependent spatial variation in mortality.

Detailed statistical analysis plan for a randomised controlled trial of the effects of a modified muscle sparing posterior technique (SPAIRE) in hip hemiarthroplasty for displaced intracapsular fractures on post-operative function compared to a standard lateral approach: HemiSPAIRE.

BACKGROUND: The HemiSPAIRE trial is being conducted to determine whether a modified muscle sparing technique (SPAIRE-"Save Piriformis and Internus, Repairing Externus") in hip hemiarthroplasty brings clinical benefits compared to the standard lateral technique in adults aged 60 years or older, with a displaced intracapsular hip fracture. This article describes the detailed statistical analysis plan for the trial.  METHODS AND DESIGN: HemiSPAIRE is a definitive, pragmatic, superiority, multicentre, randomised controlled trial (with internal pilot) with two parallel groups. Participants, ward staff and all research staff involved in post-operative assessments are blinded to allocation. This article describes in detail (1) the primary and secondary outcomes; (2) the statistical analysis principles, including a survivor average causal effect (SACE) method chosen specifically to address the issue of potential bias from differential survival between trial arms, which was seen from data review by the Trial Steering Committee, the participants that will be included in each analysis, the covariates that will be included in each analysis, and how the results will be presented; (3) planned main analysis of the primary outcome; (4) planned analyses of the secondary outcomes; and (5) planned additional analyses of the primary and secondary outcomes. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04095611. Registered on 19 September 2019.

Understanding primary care diagnosis and management of sleep disturbance for people with dementia or mild cognitive impairment: a realist review protocol.

INTRODUCTION: The increasingly ageing population is associated with greater numbers of people living with dementia (PLwD) and mild cognitive impairment (MCI). There are an estimated 55 million PLwD and approximately 6% of people over 60 years of age are living with MCI, with the figure rising to 25% for those aged between 80 and 84 years. Sleep disturbances are common for this population, but there is currently no standardised approach within UK primary care to manage this. Coined as a 'wicked design problem', sleep disturbances in this population are complex, with interventions supporting best management in context. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: The aim of this realist review is to deepen our understanding of what is considered 'sleep disturbance' in PLwD or MCI within primary care. Specifically, we endeavour to better understand how sleep disturbance is assessed, diagnosed and managed. To co-produce this protocol and review, we have recruited a stakeholder group comprising individuals with lived experience of dementia or MCI, primary healthcare staff and sleep experts. This review will be conducted in line with Pawson's five stages including the development of our initial programme theory, literature searches and the refinement of theory. The Realist and Meta-narrative Evidence Syntheses: Evolving Standards (RAMESES) quality and reporting standards will also be followed. The realist review will be an iterative process and our initial realist programme theory will be tested and refined in response to our data searches and stakeholder discussions. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: Ethical approval is not required for this review. We will follow the RAMESES standards to ensure we produce a complete and transparent report. Our final programme theory will help us to devise a tailored sleep management tool for primary healthcare professionals, PLwD and their carers. Our dissemination strategy will include lay summaries via email and our research website, peer-reviewed publications and social media posts. PROSPERO REGISTRATION NUMBER: CRD42022304679.

Limited receipt of support services among people with mild-to-moderate dementia: Findings from the IDEAL cohort.

BACKGROUND: Global initiatives that promote public health responses to dementia have resulted in numerous countries developing new national policies. Current policy guidelines in England, for example, recommend that people diagnosed with mild-to-moderate dementia receive information and psychosocial interventions to improve their ability to 'live well'. However, it remains unclear to what extent these recommendations are being achieved. METHODS: Self-reported information from 1537 people living with dementia and informant-reported information from 1277 carers of people living with dementia was used to quantify receipt of community-based dementia support services, including health and social care services provided by statutory or voluntary-sector organisations, in Britain from 2014 to 2016. Demographic factors associated with differences in receipt of support services were also investigated to identify particularly vulnerable groups of people living with dementia. RESULTS: Both self- and informant reports suggested that approximately 50% of people living with dementia received support services for dementia. Receipt of support services was lower among people living with dementia who are older, female, and have fewer educational qualifications. Receipt of support services also differed according to diagnosis and carer status, but was unrelated to marital status. CONCLUSIONS: Limited receipt of dementia support services among people living with dementia in Britain provides a baseline to assess the efficacy of current policy guidelines regarding provision of information and support. Targeted efforts to facilitate receipt of support services among the particularly vulnerable groups identified in the current study could improve the efficacy of dementia support services both in Britain and internationally, and should inform policy development.

Spatial cognitive ability is associated with transitory movement speed but not straightness during the early stages of exploration.

Memories about the spatial environment, such as the locations of foraging patches, are expected to affect how individuals move around the landscape. However, individuals differ in the ability to remember spatial locations (spatial cognitive ability) and evidence is growing that these inter-individual differences influence a range of fitness proxies. Yet empirical evaluations directly linking inter-individual variation in spatial cognitive ability and the development and structure of movement paths are lacking. We assessed the performance of young pheasants (Phasianus colchicus) on a spatial cognition task before releasing them into a novel, rural landscape and tracking their movements. We quantified changes in the straightness and speed of their transitory paths over one month. Birds with better performances on the task initially made slower transitory paths than poor performers but by the end of the month, there was no difference in speed. In general, birds increased the straightness of their path over time, indicating improved efficiency independent of speed, but this was not related to performance on the cognitive task. We suggest that initial slow movements may facilitate more detailed information gathering by better performers and indicates a potential link between an individual's spatial cognitive ability and their movement behaviour.

Is habitat selection in the wild shaped by individual-level cognitive biases in orientation strategy?

Cognitive biases for encoding spatial information (orientation strategies) in relation to self (egocentric) or landmarks (allocentric) differ between species or populations according to the habitats they occupy. Whether biases in orientation strategy determine early habitat selection or if individuals adapt their biases following experience is unknown. We determined orientation strategies of pheasants, Phasianus colchicus, using a dual-strategy maze with an allocentric probe trial, before releasing them (n = 20) into a novel landscape, where we monitored their movement and habitat selection. In general, pheasants selected for woodland over non-woodland habitat, but allocentric-biased individuals exhibited weaker avoidance of non-woodland habitat, where we expected allocentric navigation to be more effective. Sex did not influence selection but was associated with speed and directional persistence in non-woodland habitat. Our results suggest that an individual's habitat selection is associated with inherent cognitive bias in early life, but it is not yet clear what advantages this may offer.

Heritability and correlations among learning and inhibitory control traits.

To understand the evolution of cognitive abilities, we need to understand both how selection acts upon them and their genetic (co)variance structure. Recent work suggests that there are fitness consequences for free-living individuals with particular cognitive abilities. However, our current understanding of the heritability of these abilities is restricted to domesticated species subjected to artificial selection. We investigated genetic variance for, and genetic correlations among four cognitive abilities: inhibitory control, visual and spatial discrimination, and spatial ability, measured on >450 pheasants, Phasianus colchicus, over four generations. Pheasants were reared in captivity but bred from adults that lived in the wild and hence, were subject to selection on survival. Pheasant chicks are precocial and were reared without parents, enabling us to standardize environmental and parental care effects. We constructed a pedigree based on 15 microsatellite loci and implemented animal models to estimate heritability. We found moderate heritabilities for discrimination learning and inhibitory control (h2 = 0.17-0.23) but heritability for spatial ability was low (h2 = 0.09). Genetic correlations among-traits were largely positive but characterized by high uncertainty and were not statistically significant. Principle component analysis of the genetic correlation matrix estimate revealed a leading component that explained 69% of the variation, broadly in line with expectations under a general intelligence model of cognition. However, this pattern was not apparent in the phenotypic correlation structure which was more consistent with a modular view of animal cognition. Our findings highlight that the expression of cognitive traits is influenced by environmental factors which masks the underlying genetic structure.

Early-life learning ability predicts adult social structure, with potential implications for fitness outcomes in the wild.

Social environments influence important ecological processes and can determine how selection acts on traits. Cognitive abilities can shape these social environments and in turn, affect individuals' fitness. To understand how cognitive abilities evolve, we need to understand the complex interplay between an individual's cognitive abilities, the social environment that they inhabit and the fitness consequences of these relationships. We measured the associative learning ability of pheasant chicks, Phasianus colchicus, then released them into the wild where we quantified their social position by observing their associations at feeding stations and monitored the number of days survived. We observed disassortative mixing by learning performance at the population level, and poor learners had more associates than good learners. Learning was beneficial for survival when focal individuals had fewer than four associates, but survival probability across learning abilities equalized for individuals with more than four associates. While the mechanisms underlying these relationships remain to be determined, the patterns of association exhibited by pheasants at feeders can be predicted by individual variation in cognitive performances and we suspect these patterns are related to differences in information use. Critically, these resulting patterns of association have fitness consequences for individuals that cannot be explained directly by their cognitive ability, but which could mediate selection on cognition.

No evidence that footedness in pheasants influences cognitive performance in tasks assessing colour discrimination and spatial ability.

The differential specialization of each side of the brain facilitates the parallel processing of information and has been documented in a wide range of animals. Animals that are more lateralized as indicated by consistent preferential limb use are commonly reported to exhibit superior cognitive ability as well as other behavioural advantages. We assayed the lateralization of 135 young pheasants (Phasianus colchicus), indicated by their footedness in a spontaneous stepping task, and related this measure to individual performance in either 3 assays of visual or spatial learning and memory. We found no evidence that pronounced footedness enhances cognitive ability in any of the tasks. We also found no evidence that an intermediate footedness relates to better cognitive performance. This lack of relationship is surprising because previous work revealed that pheasants have a slight population bias towards right footedness, and when released into the wild, individuals with higher degrees of footedness were more likely to die. One explanation for why extreme lateralization is constrained was that it led to poorer cognitive performance, or that optimal cognitive performance was associated with some intermediate level of lateralization. This stabilizing selection could explain the pattern of moderate lateralization that is seen in most non-human species that have been studied. However, we found no evidence in this study to support this explanation.

The inhibitory control of pheasants (Phasianus colchicus) weakens when previously learned environmental information becomes unpredictable.

Inhibitory control (IC) is the ability to intentionally restrain initial, ineffective responses to a stimulus and instead exhibit an alternative behaviour that is not pre-potent but which effectively attains a reward. Individuals (both humans and non-human animals) differ in their IC, perhaps as a result of the different environmental conditions they have experienced. We experimentally manipulated environmental predictability, specifically how reliable information linking a cue to a reward was, over a very short time period and tested how this affected an individual's IC. We gave 119 pheasants (Phasianus colchicus) the opportunity to learn to associate a visual cue with a food reward in a binary choice task. We then perturbed this association for half the birds, whereas control birds continued to be rewarded when making the correct choice. We immediately measured all birds' on a detour IC task and again 3 days later. Perturbed birds immediately performed worse than control birds, making more unrewarded pecks at the apparatus than control birds, although this effect was less for individuals that had more accurately learned the initial association. The effect of the perturbation was not seen 3 days later, suggesting that individual IC performance is highly plastic and susceptible to recent changes in environmental predictability. Specifically, individuals may perform poorly in activities requiring IC immediately after information in their environment is perturbed, with the perturbation inducing emotional arousal. Our finding that recent environmental changes can affect IC performance, depending on how well an animal has learned about that environment, means that interpreting individual differences in IC must account for both prior experience and relevant individual learning abilities.

Response learning confounds assays of inhibitory control on detour tasks.

The ability to inhibit prepotent actions towards rewards that are made inaccessible by transparent barriers has been considered to reflect capacities for inhibitory control (IC). Typically, subjects initially reach directly, and incorrectly, for the reward. With experience, subjects may inhibit this action and instead detour around barriers to access the reward. However, assays of IC are often measured across multiple trials, with the location of the reward remaining constant. Consequently, other cognitive processes, such as response learning (acquisition of a motor routine), may confound accurate assays of IC. We measured baseline IC capacities in pheasant chicks, Phasianus colchicus, using a transparent cylinder task. Birds were then divided into two training treatments, where they learned to access a reward placed behind a transparent barrier, but experienced differential reinforcement of a particular motor response. In the stationary-barrier treatment, the location of the barrier remained constant across trials. We, therefore, reinforced a fixed motor response, such as always go left, which birds could learn to aid their performance. Conversely, we alternated the location of the barrier across trials for birds in the moving-barrier treatment and hence provided less reinforcement of their response learning. All birds then experienced a second presentation of the transparent cylinder task to assess whether differences in the training treatments influenced their subsequent capacities for IC. Birds in the stationary-barrier treatment showed a greater improvement in their subsequent IC performance after training compared to birds in the moving-barrier treatment. We, therefore, suggest that response learning aids IC performance on detour tasks. Consequently, non-target cognitive processes associated with different neural substrates appear to underlie performances on detour tasks, which may confound accurate assays of IC. Our findings question the construct validity of a commonly used paradigm that is widely considered to assess capacities for IC in humans and other animals.

Unpredictable environments enhance inhibitory control in pheasants.

The ability to control impulsive actions is an important executive function that is central to the self-regulation of behaviours and, in humans, can have important implications for mental and physical health. One key factor that promotes individual differences in inhibitory control (IC) is the predictability of environmental information experienced during development (i.e. reliability of resources and social trust). However, environmental predictability can also influence motivational and other cognitive abilities, which may therefore confound interpretations of the mechanisms underlying IC. We investigated the role of environmental predictability, food motivation and cognition on IC. We reared pheasant chicks, Phasianus colchicus, under standardised conditions, in which birds experienced environments that differed in their spatial predictability. We systematically manipulated spatial predictability during their first 8 weeks of life, by either moving partitions daily to random locations (unpredictable environment) or leaving them in fixed locations (predictable environment). We assessed motivation by presenting pheasants with two different foraging tasks that measured their dietary breadth and persistence to acquire inaccessible food rewards, as well as recording their latencies to acquire a freely available baseline worm positioned adjacent to each test apparatus, their body condition (mass/tarsus3) and sex. We assessed cognitive performance by presenting each bird with an 80-trial binary colour discrimination task. IC was assessed using a transparent detour apparatus, which required subjects to inhibit prepotent attempts to directly acquire a visible reward through the barrier and instead detour around a barrier. We found greater capacities for IC in pheasants that were reared in spatially unpredictable environments compared to those reared in predictable environments. While IC was unrelated to individual differences in cognitive performance on the colour discrimination task or motivational measures, we found that environmental predictability had differential effects on sex. Males reared in an unpredictable environment, and all females regardless of their rearing environment, were less persistent than males reared in a predictable environment. Our findings, therefore, suggest that an individual's developmental experience can influence their performance on IC tasks.

A single factor explanation for associative learning performance on colour discrimination problems in common pheasants (Phasianus colchicus).

It remains unclear whether performance of non-human animals on cognitive test batteries can be explained by domain general cognitive processes, as is found in humans. The persistence of this dispute is likely to stem from a lack of clarity of the psychological or neural processes involved. One broadly accepted cognitive process, that may predict performance in a range of psychometric tasks, is associative learning. We therefore investigated intra-individual performances on tasks that incorporate processes of associative learning, by assessing the speed of acquisition and reversal learning in up to 187 pheasants (Phasianus colchicus) on four related binary colour discrimination tasks. We found a strong, positive significant bivariate relationship between an individual's acquisition and reversal learning performances on one cue set. Weak, positive significant bivariate relationships were also found between an individual's performance on pairs of reversal tasks and between the acquisition and reversal performances on different cue sets. A single factor, robust to parallel analysis, explained 36% of variation in performance across tasks. Inter-individual variation could not be explained by differential prior experience, age, sex or body condition. We propose that a single factor explanation, which we call 'a', summarises the covariance among scores obtained from these visual discrimination tasks, as they all assess capacities for associative learning. We argue that 'a' may represent an underlying cognitive ability exhibited by an individual, which manifests across a variety of tasks requiring associative processes.

The relationship between social rank and spatial learning in pheasants, Phasianus colchicus: cause or consequence?

Individual differences in performances on cognitive tasks have been found to differ according to social rank across multiple species. However, it is not clear whether an individual's cognitive performance is flexible and the result of their current social rank, modulated by social interactions (social state dependent hypothesis), or if it is determined prior to the formation of the social hierarchy and indeed influences an individual's rank (prior attributes hypothesis). We separated these two hypotheses by measuring learning performance of male pheasants, Phasianus colchicus, on a spatial discrimination task as chicks and again as adults. We inferred adult male social rank from observing agonistic interactions while housed in captive multi-male multi-female groups. Learning performance of adult males was assayed after social rank had been standardised; by housing single males with two or four females. We predicted that if cognitive abilities determine social rank formation we would observe: consistency between chick and adult performances on the cognitive task and chick performance would predict adult social rank. We found that learning performances were consistent from chicks to adults for task accuracy, but not for speed of learning and chick learning performances were not related to adult social rank. Therefore, we could not support the prior attributes hypothesis of cognitive abilities aiding social rank formation. Instead, we found that individual differences in learning performances of adults were predicted by the number of females a male was housed with; males housed with four females had higher levels of learning performance than males housed with two females; and their most recent recording of captive social rank, even though learning performance was assayed while males were in a standardized, non-competitive environment. This does not support the hypothesis that direct social pressures are causing the inter-individual variation in learning performances that we observe. Instead, our results suggest that there may be carry-over effects of aggressive social interactions on learning performance. Consequently, whether early life spatial learning performances influence social rank is unclear but these performances are modulated by the current social environment and a male's most recent social rank.

Size dimorphism and sexual segregation in pheasants: tests of three competing hypotheses.

Fine scale sexual segregation outside of the mating season is common in sexually dimorphic and polygamous species, particularly in ungulates. A number of hypotheses predict sexual segregation but these are often contradictory with no agreement as to a common cause, perhaps because they are species specific. We explicitly tested three of these hypotheses which are commonly linked by a dependence on sexual dimorphism for animals which exhibit fine-scale sexual segregation; the Predation Risk Hypothesis, the Forage Selection Hypothesis, and the Activity Budget Hypothesis, in a single system the pheasant, Phasianus colchicus; a large, sedentary bird that is predominantly terrestrial and therefore analogous to ungulates rather than many avian species which sexually segregate. Over four years we reared 2,400 individually tagged pheasants from one day old and after a period of 8-10 weeks we released them into the wild. We then followed the birds for 7 months, during the period that they sexually segregate, determined their fate and collected behavioural and morphological measures pertinent to the hypotheses. Pheasants are sexually dimorphic during the entire period that they sexually segregate in the wild; males are larger than females in both body size and gut measurements. However, this did not influence predation risk and predation rates (as predicted by the Predation Risk Hypothesis), diet choice (as predicted by the Forage Selection Hypothesis), or the amount of time spent foraging, resting or walking (as predicted by the Activity Budget Hypothesis). We conclude that adult sexual size dimorphism is not responsible for sexual segregation in the pheasant in the wild. Instead, we consider that segregation may be mediated by other, perhaps social, factors. We highlight the importance of studies on a wide range of taxa to help further the knowledge of sexual segregation.

Low survival of strongly footed pheasants may explain constraints on lateralization.

Brain lateralization is considered adaptive because it leads to behavioral biases and specializations that bring fitness benefits. Across species, strongly lateralized individuals perform better in specific behaviors likely to improve survival. What constrains continued exaggerated lateralization? We measured survival of pheasants, finding that individuals with stronger bias in their footedness had shorter life expectancies compared to individuals with weak biases. Consequently, weak, or no footedness provided the highest fitness benefits. If, as suggested, footedness is indicative of more general brain lateralization, this could explain why continued brain lateralization is constrained even though it may improve performance in specific behaviors.

Intra-individual variation in performance on novel variants of similar tasks influences single factor explanations of general cognitive processes.

Intra-individual variation in performance within and across cognitive domains may confound interpretations of both domain-general and domain-specific abilities. Such variation is rarely considered in animal test batteries. We investigate individual consistency in performance by presenting pheasant chicks (n = 31), raised under standardized conditions, with nine different cognitive tasks. Among these tasks were two replicated novel variants of colour learning and colour reversal problems, tests of positional learning and memory, as well as two different tasks that captured multiple putative measures of inhibitory control and motor-related performance. These task variants were also used to compare subjects' performance on alternative test batteries comprised of different task combinations. Subjects' performance improved with experience, yet we found relatively little consistency in their performance, both within similar tasks using different paradigms and across different tasks. Parallel analysis revealed non-significant factors when all nine tasks were included in a principal axis factor analysis. However, when different combinations of six of the nine tasks were included in principal axis factoring, 14 of 84 combinations revealed significant main factors, explaining between 28 and 35% of the variance in task performance. While comparable findings have been suggested to reflect domain-general intelligence in other species, we found no evidence to suggest that a single factor encompassed a diverse range of cognitive abilities in pheasants. Instead, we reveal how single factor explanations of cognitive processes can be influenced by test battery composition and intra-individual variation in performance across tasks. Our findings highlight the importance of conducting multiple tests within specific domains to ensure robust cognitive measures are obtained.