Beran Michael J
Language Research Center, Georgia State University, Atlanta 30302, USA.
J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process. 2008 Jan;34(1):63-74. doi: 10.1037/0097-7403.34.1.63.
Despite many demonstrations of numerical competence in nonhuman animals, little is known about how well animals enumerate moving stimuli. In this series of experiments, rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) and capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) performed computerized tasks in which they had to enumerate sets of stimuli. In Experiment 1, rhesus monkeys compared two sets of moving stimuli. Experiment 2 required comparisons of a moving set and a static set. Experiment 3 included human participants and capuchin monkeys to assess all 3 species' performance and to determine whether responding was to the numerical properties of the stimulus sets rather than to some other stimulus property such as cumulative area. Experiment 4 required both monkey species to enumerate subsets of each moving array. In all experiments, monkeys performed above chance levels, and their responses were controlled by the number of items in the arrays as opposed to nonnumerical stimulus dimensions. Rhesus monkeys performed comparably to adult humans when directly compared although capuchin performance was lower.
尽管在非人类动物中已经有许多关于数字能力的证明，但对于动物在枚举移动刺激方面的表现如何却知之甚少。在这一系列实验中，恒河猴（猕猴）和卷尾猴（僧帽猴）执行了计算机化任务，在这些任务中它们必须枚举刺激集。在实验1中，恒河猴比较了两组移动刺激。实验2要求比较一组移动刺激和一组静态刺激。实验3纳入了人类参与者和卷尾猴，以评估所有三个物种的表现，并确定反应是否针对刺激集的数字属性而非其他刺激属性，如累积面积。实验4要求两种猴子都枚举每个移动阵列的子集。在所有实验中，猴子的表现均高于随机水平，并且它们的反应由阵列中的项目数量控制，而非非数字刺激维度。当直接比较时，恒河猴的表现与成年人类相当，尽管卷尾猴的表现较低。
