Agrillo Christian, Parrish Audrey E, Beran Michael J
Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, Via Venezia 8, 35131, Padova, Italy,
Psychon Bull Rev. 2014 Aug;21(4):986-94. doi: 10.3758/s13423-013-0573-2.
A long-standing debate surrounds the issue of whether human and nonhuman animals share the same perceptual mechanisms. In humans, the Zöllner illusion occurs when two parallel lines appear to be convergent when oblique crosshatching lines are superimposed. Although one baboon study suggests that they too might perceive this illusion, the results of that study were unclear, whereas two recent studies suggest that birds see this illusion in the opposite direction from humans. It is currently unclear whether these mixed results are an artifact of the experimental design or reflect a peculiarity of birds' visual system or, instead, a wider phenomenon shared among nonhuman mammals. Here, we trained 6 monkeys to select the narrower of two gaps at the end of two convergent lines. Three different conditions were set up: control (no crosshatches), perpendicular (crosshatches not inducing the illusion), and Zöllner (crosshatches inducing the illusion in humans). During training, the degrees of convergence between the two lines ranged from 15° to 12°. Monkeys that reached the training criterion were tested with more difficult discriminations (11°-1°), including probe trials with parallel lines (0°). The results showed that monkeys perceived the Zöllner illusion in the same direction as humans. Comparison of these data with the data from bird studies points toward the existence of different orientation-tuned mechanisms between primate and nonprimate species.
关于人类和非人类动物是否具有相同的感知机制这一问题，长期以来一直存在争议。在人类中，当两条平行线被斜向交叉线叠加时，会出现佐尔纳错觉（即两条平行线看起来会汇聚）。虽然一项关于狒狒的研究表明它们可能也会感知到这种错觉，但该研究结果并不明确，而最近的两项研究表明鸟类看到这种错觉的方向与人类相反。目前尚不清楚这些混合结果是实验设计的人为产物，还是反映了鸟类视觉系统的特殊性，亦或是非人类哺乳动物共有的更广泛现象。在这里，我们训练了6只猴子在两条汇聚线末端选择较窄的两个间隙之一。设置了三种不同的条件：对照（无交叉线）、垂直（交叉线不产生错觉）和佐尔纳（交叉线在人类中产生错觉）。在训练过程中，两条线之间的汇聚角度范围为15°至12°。达到训练标准的猴子接受了更具挑战性的辨别测试（11° - 1°），包括平行线（0°）的探测试验。结果表明，猴子感知佐尔纳错觉的方向与人类相同。将这些数据与鸟类研究的数据进行比较，表明灵长类和非灵长类物种之间存在不同的方向调谐机制。
