BACKGROUND Individuals consistently differ in behaviour, exhibiting so-called personalities. In many species, individuals differ also in their cognitive abilities. When personalities and cognitive abilities occur in distinct combinations, they can be described as 'cognitive styles'. Both empirical and theoretical investigations produced contradicting or mixed results regarding the complex interplay between cognitive styles and environmental conditions. RESULTS Here we use individual-based simulations to show that, under just slightly different environmental conditions, different cognitive styles exist and under a variety of conditions, can also co-exist. Co-existences are based on individual specialization on different resources, or, more generally speaking, on individuals adopting different niches or microhabitats. CONCLUSIONS The results presented here suggest that in many species, individuals of the same population may adopt different cognitive styles. Thereby the present study may help to explain the variety of styles described in previous studies and why different, sometimes contradicting, results have been found under similar conditions.

中文翻译：

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模拟认知风格的演变。

背景技术个体在行为上总是不同的，表现出所谓的个性。在许多物种中，个体的认知能力也有所不同。当个性和认知能力以不同的组合出现时，它们可以被描述为“认知风格”。关于认知风格和环境条件之间复杂的相互作用，无论是经验研究还是理论研究，都产生了矛盾或混杂的结果。结果在这里，我们使用基于个体的模拟表明，在稍微不同的环境条件下，存在不同的认知方式，并且在各种条件下也可以共存。共存是基于个人在不同资源上的专业化，或更普遍地说，是基于采用不同生态位或微生境的个人。结论这里提出的结果表明，在许多物种中，相同种群的个体可能采用不同的认知方式。因此，本研究可能有助于解释先前研究中描述的各种样式，以及为什么在相似的条件下发现了不同的，有时是相互矛盾的结果。