Smith J David, Crossley Matthew J, Boomer Joseph, Church Barbara A, Beran Michael J, Ashby F Gregory
Department of Psychology, University at Buffalo, State University of New York, Buffalo, NY 14260, USA.
J Comp Psychol. 2012 Aug;126(3):294-304. doi: 10.1037/a0026031. Epub 2011 Oct 24.
Current theories of human categorization differentiate an explicit, rule-based system of category learning from an implicit system that slowly associates regions of perceptual space with response outputs. The researchers extended this theoretical differentiation to the category learning of New World primates. Four capuchins (Cebus apella) learned categories of circular sine-wave gratings that varied in bar spatial frequency and orientation. The rule-based and information-integration tasks, respectively, had one-dimensional and two-dimensional solutions. Capuchins, like humans, strongly dimensionalized the stimuli and learned the rule-based task more easily. The results strengthen the suggestion that nonhuman primates have some structural components of humans' capacity for explicit categorization, which in humans is linked to declarative cognition and consciousness. The results also strengthen the primate contrast to other vertebrate species that may lack the explicit system. Therefore, the results raise important questions about the origins of the explicit categorization system during cognitive evolution and about its overall phylogenetic distribution.
当前关于人类分类的理论将基于规则的明确分类学习系统与一个隐性系统区分开来，该隐性系统会缓慢地将感知空间区域与反应输出联系起来。研究人员将这种理论区分扩展到了新大陆灵长类动物的分类学习中。四只卷尾猴（僧帽猴）学习了在条纹空间频率和方向上有所不同的圆形正弦波光栅类别。基于规则的任务和信息整合任务分别有一维和二维的解决方案。卷尾猴和人类一样，对刺激进行了强烈的维度化处理，并且更容易学习基于规则的任务。这些结果强化了这样一种观点，即非人类灵长类动物具有人类明确分类能力的一些结构组成部分，而在人类中，这种能力与陈述性认知和意识相关联。这些结果也强化了灵长类动物与其他可能缺乏明确系统的脊椎动物物种之间的对比。因此，这些结果引发了关于认知进化过程中明确分类系统的起源以及其整体系统发育分布的重要问题。
