Hauser Marc D, Dehaene Stanislas, Dehaene-Lambertz Ghislaine, Patalano Andrea L
Department of Psychology & Program in Neurosciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
Cognition. 2002 Dec;86(2):B23-32. doi: 10.1016/s0010-0277(02)00158-0.
Studies using operant training have demonstrated that laboratory animals can discriminate the number of objects or events based on either auditory or visual stimuli, as well as the integration of both auditory and visual modalities. To date, studies of spontaneous number discrimination in untrained animals have been restricted to the visual modality, leaving open the question of whether such capacities generalize to other modalities such as audition. To explore the capacity to spontaneously discriminate number based on auditory stimuli, and to assess the abstractness of the representation underlying this capacity, a habituation-discrimination procedure involving speech and pure tones was used with a colony of cotton-top tamarins. In the habituation phase, we presented subjects with either two- or three-speech syllable sequences that varied with respect to overall duration, inter-syllable duration, and pitch. In the test phase, we presented subjects with a counterbalanced order of either two- or three-tone sequences that also varied with respect to overall duration, inter-syllable duration, and pitch. The proportion of looking responses to test stimuli differing in number was significantly greater than to test stimuli consisting of the same number. Combined with earlier work, these results show that at least one non-human primate species can spontaneously discriminate number in both the visual and auditory domain, indicating that this capacity is not tied to a particular modality, and within a modality, can accommodate differences in format.
使用操作性训练的研究表明，实验动物能够基于听觉或视觉刺激，以及听觉和视觉两种模态的整合来区分物体或事件的数量。迄今为止，对未受过训练的动物进行自发数字辨别能力的研究仅限于视觉模态，这使得这种能力是否能推广到诸如听觉等其他模态的问题仍未得到解答。为了探究基于听觉刺激自发辨别数字的能力，并评估这种能力背后表征的抽象程度，我们对一群棉顶狨猴采用了一种涉及语音和纯音的习惯化 - 辨别程序。在习惯化阶段，我们向实验对象呈现由两个或三个语音音节组成的序列，这些序列在总时长、音节间时长和音高方面有所不同。在测试阶段，我们向实验对象呈现由两个或三个音调序列组成的平衡顺序，这些序列同样在总时长、音节间时长和音高方面有所不同。对数量不同的测试刺激的注视反应比例显著高于对数量相同的测试刺激的注视反应比例。结合早期的研究工作，这些结果表明，至少有一种非人类灵长类动物能够在视觉和听觉领域自发辨别数字，这表明这种能力并不局限于特定的模态，并且在一种模态内，能够适应形式上的差异。
