Drucker Caroline B, Rossa Marley A, Brannon Elizabeth M
Department of Neurobiology and Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Duke University, Box 90999, Durham, NC, 27708, USA.
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience and Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Duke University, Box 90999, Durham, NC, 27708, USA.
Anim Cogn. 2016 Jan;19(1):75-89. doi: 10.1007/s10071-015-0914-9. Epub 2015 Aug 19.
Perceiving and comparing ratios are crucial skills for humans. Little is known about whether other animals can compare ratios. We trained two rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) to choose arrays that contained the greater ratio of positive to negative stimuli, regardless of the absolute number of stimuli in each of the two choice arrays. Subjects learned this task, and their performance generalized to novel ratios. Moreover, performance was modulated by the ratio between ratios; subjects responded more quickly and accurately when the ratio between ratios was higher. Control conditions ruled out the possibility that subjects were relying on surface area, although the ratio between ratios of surface area did seem to influence their choices. Our results demonstrate that rhesus monkeys can compare discrete ratios, demonstrating not only proportional reasoning ability but also the ability to reason about relations between relations.
感知和比较比例是人类的关键技能。对于其他动物是否能够比较比例，我们知之甚少。我们训练了两只恒河猴（猕猴），让它们选择包含正性刺激与负性刺激比例更高的阵列，而不考虑两个选择阵列中每种刺激的绝对数量。实验对象学会了这项任务，并且它们的表现能够推广到新的比例。此外，表现会受到比例之间的比例调节；当比例之间的比例更高时，实验对象的反应更快且更准确。对照条件排除了实验对象依赖表面积的可能性，尽管表面积比例之间的比例似乎确实影响了它们的选择。我们的结果表明，恒河猴能够比较离散比例，这不仅证明了它们具有比例推理能力，还证明了它们具有对关系之间的关系进行推理的能力。
