De Lillo Carlo, Spinozzi Giovanna, Palumbo Milena, Giustino Giuseppe
School of Psychology, University of Leicester, UK.
J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process. 2011 Jul;37(3):341-52. doi: 10.1037/a0022989.
Humans show a global advantage when processing hierarchical visual patterns, and they detect the global level of stimulus structure more accurately and faster than the local level in several stimulus contexts. By contrast, capuchins (Cebus apella) and other monkey species show a strong local advantage. A key factor which, if manipulated, could cause an inversion of this effect in monkeys is still to be found. In this study, we examined whether it was possible to induce attention allocation to global and local levels of perceptual analysis in capuchin monkeys and if by doing so, their local dominance could be reversed. We manipulated attentional bias using a matching-to-sample (MTS) task where the proportion of trials requiring global and local processing varied between conditions. The monkeys were compared with humans tested with the same paradigm. Monkeys showed a local advantage in the local bias condition but a global advantage in the global bias condition. The role of attention in processing was confined to the local trials in a first phase of testing but extended to both local and global trials in the course of task practice. Humans exhibited an overall global dominance and an effect of attentional bias on the speed of processing of the global and local level of the stimuli. These results indicate a role for attention in the processing of hierarchical stimuli in monkeys and are discussed in relation to the extent to which they can explain the differences between capuchin monkeys and humans observed in this and other studies.
人类在处理层次视觉模式时表现出全局优势，并且在几种刺激情境中，他们比局部水平更准确、更快地检测到刺激结构的全局水平。相比之下，卷尾猴（僧帽猴）和其他猴类则表现出强烈的局部优势。一个关键因素（如果加以操控）可能导致猴子出现这种效应的反转，但目前仍有待发现。在本研究中，我们考察了是否有可能在卷尾猴中诱导其将注意力分配到感知分析的全局和局部水平，以及这样做是否能逆转它们的局部优势。我们使用样本匹配（MTS）任务来操控注意力偏差，在该任务中，要求进行全局和局部处理的试验比例在不同条件下有所变化。将这些猴子与采用相同范式进行测试的人类进行比较。猴子在局部偏差条件下表现出局部优势，但在全局偏差条件下表现出全局优势。在测试的第一阶段，注意力在处理过程中的作用仅限于局部试验，但在任务练习过程中扩展到了局部和全局试验。人类表现出总体上的全局优势以及注意力偏差对刺激全局和局部水平处理速度的影响。这些结果表明了注意力在猴子处理层次刺激中的作用，并结合它们能在多大程度上解释本研究及其他研究中观察到的卷尾猴与人类之间的差异进行了讨论。
