Abstract
Humans mentally represent numbers along a number line, and the
direction of this representation is culturally influenced (Dehaene
et al., 1993). Evidence for spatial organization of magnitude has
been demonstrated in humans using the Spatial Numerical Association
of Response Codes, or SNARC, task. Evidence from list learning
tasks with monkeys has suggested a spatial organization of ordinal
information by providing evidence for distance effects, and similar
cognitive mechanisms might control both ordinal information and
magnitude information. While the distance effect has been
demonstrated in monkeys, the SNARC paradigm has not been directly
evaluated. To the extent that spatial organization of magnitude
information is an ancestral primate trait, monkeys, despite lacking
cultural tools such as number lines, should show similar evidence
of spatial organization. Because the direction of putative spatial
representations cannot be known a priori, in Experiment 1 we
trained monkeys on touchscreen computers to associate "small"
magnitude items with a rightward response and "large" magnitude
items with a leftward response to establish a right-left
orientation of representational space. In Experiment 2, we
evaluated whether monkeys use a spatial organization of magnitude
information when processing numerosity by presenting them with a
SNARC task. Monkeys learned to associate magnitude with left-right
spatial locations, and demonstrated a SNARC effect congruent with
the direction of the spatial training in Experiment 1. However, the
SNARC effect attenuated after extended testing. Thus, results
indicate that monkeys represent information spatially, but
additional testing is required to determine the robustness of
spatial representation of magnitude.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents Introduction 1 Experiment 1: Magnitude Training 5
Subjects 6 Apparatus 6 Procedures 7 Size Discrimination 7
Numerosity Discrimination 8 Length Discrimination 9 All
Discriminations Intermixed 9 Results and Discussion 9 Experiment 2:
SNARC Test 11 Subjects and Apparatus 11 Procedure 11 Data Analyses
12 Results and Discussion 13 General Discussion 16 References 19
Appendix 21
About this Master's Thesis
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