Psychology Department, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA.
Anim Cogn. 2024 Mar 6;27(1):23. doi: 10.1007/s10071-024-01853-x.
Mazes have been used in many forms to provide compelling results showcasing nonhuman animals' capacities for spatial navigation, planning, and numerical competence. The current study presented computerized two-arm mazes to four rhesus macaques. Using these mazes, we assessed whether the monkeys could maximize rewards by overcoming mild delays in gratification and sum the values of Arabic numerals. Across four test phases, monkeys used a joystick controller to choose one of two maze arms on the screen. Each maze arm contained zero, one or two Arabic numerals, and any numerals in the chosen maze arm provided the monkeys with rewards equivalent to the value of those numerals. When deciding which arm to enter, monkeys had to consider distance to numerals and numeral value. In some tests, gaining the maximum reward required summing the value of two numerals within a given arm. All four monkeys successfully maximized reward when comparing single numerals and when comparing arms that each contained two numerals. However, some biases occurred that were suboptimal: the largest single numeral and the delay of reward (by placing numerals farther into an arm from the start location) sometimes interfered with the monkeys' abilities to optimize. These results indicate that monkeys experience difficulties with inhibition toward single, high valence stimuli in tasks where those stimuli must be considered in relation to overall value when represented by symbolic stimuli such as numerals.
迷津已被广泛应用于多种形式，以提供引人注目的结果，展示非人类动物在空间导航、规划和数值能力方面的能力。本研究向四只恒河猴呈现了计算机化的双臂迷津。使用这些迷津，我们评估了猴子是否能够通过克服轻微的延迟满足来最大限度地获得奖励，并对阿拉伯数字进行求和。在四个测试阶段中，猴子使用操纵杆控制器在屏幕上选择两个迷津臂之一。每个迷津臂包含零个、一个或两个阿拉伯数字，并且选择的迷津臂中的任何数字都会为猴子提供与这些数字的价值相等的奖励。在决定进入哪个臂时，猴子必须考虑到数字的距离和数字的价值。在一些测试中，获得最大奖励需要对给定臂内的两个数字的价值进行求和。当比较单个数字和每个臂都包含两个数字时，四只猴子都成功地最大化了奖励。然而，一些次优的偏差出现了：最大的单个数字和奖励的延迟（通过将数字放置在离起始位置更远的臂中）有时会干扰猴子优化的能力。这些结果表明，在任务中，猴子在抑制对单个、高效价刺激的能力方面存在困难，在这些任务中，当以符号刺激（如数字）表示时，这些刺激必须与整体价值相关联。
