读心的比较研究：非人灵长类与人类在心理理论上的异同点及其解释

利用非人灵长类开展比较研究是探索心理理论本质、起源和进化动因的重要途经。大量实证研究显示非人灵长类可以表现出一些基础心理理论成分, 包括联合注意、意图理解和一级观点采择, 这表明心理理论在灵长类动物的进化谱系中具有进化连续性。然而, 非人灵长类无法像人类一样达成二级观点采择和错误信念理解, 潜心智化假说、替代表征假说、最小限度心理理论假说和意识关系假说试图对此差异进行解释。尽管视角与具体内容不同, 但这些假说都强调, 非人灵长类无法对其他个体关于外部世界的心理信念形成表征, 信念表征是非人灵长类与人类读心能力的重要分界点。未来研究需要重点澄清共享意图、语言机制以及社会生态环境因素与心理理论产生的相互影响作用。     

心理理论的比较认知研究

非人灵长类的心理理论是比较认知研究的重要内容,它对于揭示心理理论的起源和本质,具有重要的意义。该文综述了近年来有关心理理论比较认知的现场观察研究和实验室研究,分析了关于非人灵长类对视觉知觉经验的理解,对意图和目的的理解,以及对愿望和信念理解研究的方法和结果。许多研究关于实验设计,实验结果以及对结果的解释存在争议。如非人灵长类对意图和目的的理解,是运用心理表征,还是刺激－反应的联结,非人灵长类理解同种个体和理解人类个体的心理状态存在什么差异,实验设计是否可靠而有效地测量了非人灵长类的心理理论等。该文提出实验结果和理论解释的差异和争议,可能与研究者所持的理论假设,实验任务和设计等有关。关于非人灵长类的心理理论概念的界定,从社会生态学效度和文化差异等角度综合考虑,设计恰当的实验来考察非人灵长类的心理理论,是解决目前争议必须解决的问题,也是心理理论比较认知研究面临的困难。     

从数量表征到数表征：具身认知视角下的人类数能力获得

数能力是数学认知的基本成分。与动物所具有的基本数能力不同,人类不仅具备数量表征能力,更重要的是还拥有对数概念进行表征的数表征能力。虽然具身认知与离身认知都对数概念的表征问题进行了解释,但二者却存在明显理论分歧。具身认知观点主要从具身数量表征和数能力发展的具身认知机制两方面为人类独特数能力的获得提供了理论支撑及实证证据。这启示人们需要重视具身学习在数能力形成实践中的关键作用,重视具身数量表征在数学教学中的作用,仍需进一步揭示其内在的心理和神经基础。     

婴儿的数认知核心系统

在简要回顾双系统假设产生过程的基础上,重点分析了双系统理论的要点、工作机理、实验依据,具体包括小数量精确表征系统和大数量近似表征系统的实验依据.最后讨论了婴儿数量认知的行为和脑生理机制研究中的问题和争论点以及数量认知研究中的矛盾结果和方法局限,并探讨了婴儿数认知是独立的系统还是需要多系统联合参与等七个亟待解决的课题.     

非人灵长类的抑制控制能力

抑制控制能力是指个体为实现特定目标对干扰性优势反应进行抑制的能力,是一种高级认知能力。该文综述了对非人灵长类抑制控制能力的研究,从抑制控制能力的行为表现,生理机制及其发生、发展几个方面进行了阐述,提供了一个从演化的角度理解人类的抑制控制能力的视角。     

婴儿数量表征的客体档案和类比模型

人对数量的表征及其发展是心理学研究的重要问题之一。20世纪70年代以来,国外对婴儿数量表征的研究取得了一系列理论和方法的进步。文章简要介绍了婴儿数量辨别和推理能力的研究方法,对婴儿数量表征相关的理论进行了重点讨论。大量详实的证据表明,婴儿拥有一个“天生的”数量机制,这为人数学能力的发展提供了基础。     

核心知识系统及其对相关研究的启示

核心知识系统出现于人类个体发展和种系发展的早期,在人类复杂认知能力的发生发展中起着建构模块的作用。该文以表征物体和数量关系的两类核心知识系统的性质及二者在儿童的“数”概念形成和成人的数学思维中所起的作用为例,综述了以灵长类动物、婴儿、儿童和成人为被试的研究证据,并进而提出了核心知识系统给相关研究带来的若干启示。     

0―1.5岁婴儿表征能力的研究概述

就0-1.5岁婴儿的知识表征方面,该文主要介绍了国外的一些研究成果,指出婴儿的表征能力由感知表征向意义表征发展.即使很小的婴儿都已经有了相当复杂的表征能力,能初步感知典型的变化,识别不同种类物体的物体,表征事物与事物之间的空间关系、数量关系、因果关系等,对动因有一定的理解,并逐渐形成概念和图示     

自身运动认知的神经机制

通过光流信息来指导个体在环境中有效移动是我们视觉神经系统的一项核心任务。在灵长类的大脑皮层, 视觉运动的信息加工是由位于背侧通路的一系列脑区来完成的, 这一信息通路主要参与运动和空间动作的分析。在高级视皮层, 视觉系统很可能利用非视觉信息来补偿因眼动造成的光流模式扭曲, 以重建对自身运动方向的正确表征。根据目前研究进展, MST和VIP这两个位于顶叶的脑区都参与了自身运动认知过程, 并且对精确的自身运动方向判断是不可或缺的。本文系统介绍了近些年来在自身运动认知神经机制研究领域的进展, 尤其是神经生理学家们利用非人灵长类动物模型在自身运动认知皮层处理机制方面的成果。同时也提出了一些深入研究急需解决的关键问题。     

数学认知能力的遗传证据研究综述

数学认知能力是人类最重要的高级认知功能之一,许多研究者对其遗传性给出了相关的证据。本文从数感具有跨种系的特点、婴儿具有数量辨别能力、数学遗传的双生子研究以及遗传综合症病人的研究等间接和直接证据层面对数学认知能力的遗传性研究进行了简要的总结分析,指出对数学认知能力的遗传基因研究还需要从正常人的角度做进一步的研究探索,以便真正找到数学能力的遗传基因。     

The origins of belief representation: Monkeys fail to automatically represent others’ beliefs

Young infants’ successful performance on false belief tasks has led several researchers to argue that there may be a core knowledge system for representing the beliefs of other agents, emerging early in human development and constraining automatic belief processing into adulthood. One way to investigate this purported core belief representation system is to examine whether non-human primates share such a system. Although non-human primates have historically performed poorly on false belief tasks that require executive function capacities, little work has explored how primates perform on more automatic measures of belief processing. To get at this issue, we modified Kovács et al. (2010)’s test of automatic belief representation to examine whether one non-human primate species—the rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta)—is automatically influenced by another agent’s beliefs when tracking an object’s location. Monkeys saw an event in which a human agent watched an apple move back and forth between two boxes and an outcome in which one box was revealed to be empty. By occluding segments of the apple’s movement from either the monkey or the agent, we manipulated both the monkeys’ belief (true or false) and agent’s belief (true or false) about the final location of the apple. We found that monkeys looked longer at events that violated their own beliefs than at events that were consistent with their beliefs. In contrast to human infants, however, monkeys’ expectations were not influenced by another agent’s beliefs, suggesting that belief representation may be an aspect of core knowledge unique to humans.     

Small and large number discrimination in guppies

Non-verbal numerical behavior in human infants, human adults, and non-human primates appears to be rooted in two distinct mechanisms: a precise system for tracking and comparing small numbers of items simultaneously (up to 3 or 4 items) and an approximate system for estimating numerical magnitude of a group of objects. The most striking evidence that these two mechanisms are distinct comes from the apparent inability of young human infants and non-human primates to compare quantites across the small (<3 or 4)/large (>4) number boundary. We ask whether this distinction is present in lower animal species more distantly related to humans, guppies (Poecilia reticulata). We found that, like human infants and non-human primates, fish succeed at comparisons between large numbers only (5 vs. 10), succeed at comparisons between small numbers only (3 vs. 4), but systematically fail at comparisons that closely span the small/large boundary (3 vs. 5). Furthermore, increasing the distance between the small and large number resulted in successful discriminations (3 vs. 6, 3 vs. 7, and 3 vs. 9). This pattern of successes and failures is similar to those observed in human infants and non-human primates to suggest that the two systems are present and functionally distinct across a wide variety of animal species.     

Spontaneous number representation in mosquitofish

While there is convincing evidence that preverbal human infants and non-human primates can spontaneously represent number, considerable debate surrounds the possibility that such capacity is also present in other animals. Fish show a remarkable ability to discriminate between different numbers of social companions. Previous work has demonstrated that in fish the same set of signature limits that characterize non-verbal numerical systems in primates is present but yet to provide any demonstration that fish can really represent number rather than basing their discrimination on continuous attributes that co-vary with number. In the present work, using the method of ‘item by item’ presentation, we provide the first evidence that fish are capable of selecting the larger group of social companions relying exclusively on numerical information. In our tests subjects could choose between one large and one small group of companions when permitted to see only one fish at a time. Fish were successful when both small (3 vs. 2) and large numbers (8 vs. 4) were involved and their performance was not affected by the density of the fish or by the overall space occupied by the group.     

Core knowledge

Human cognition is founded, in part, on four systems for representing objects, actions, number, and space. It may be based, as well, on a fifth system for representing social partners. Each system has deep roots in human phylogeny and ontogeny, and it guides and shapes the mental lives of adults. Converging research on human infants, non-human primates, children and adults in diverse cultures can aid both understanding of these systems and attempts to overcome their limits.     

When quantity trumps number: discrimination experiments in cotton-top tamarins (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Saguinus oedipus</Emphasis>) and common marmosets (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Callithrix jacchus</Emphasis>)

The capacity for non-linguistic, numerical discrimination has been well characterized in non-human animals, with recent studies providing careful controls for non-numerical confounds such as continuous extent, density, and quantity. More poorly understood are the conditions under which animals use numerical versus non-numerical quantification, and the nature of the relation between these two systems. Here we test whether cotton-top tamarins and common marmosets can discriminate between two quantities on the basis of the amount of food rather than on number. In three experiments, we show that when choosing between arrays containing different numbers and sizes of food objects, both species based their decisions on the amount of food with only minor influences of numerical information. Further, we find that subjects successfully discriminated between two quantities differing by a 2:3 or greater ratio, which is consistent with the ratio limits found for numerical discrimination with this species. These studies demonstrate that non-human primates possess mechanisms that enable quantification of total amount, in addition to the numerical representations demonstrated in previous studies, with both types of quantification subject to similar processing limits.     

Do gorillas (Gorilla gorilla) and orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) fail to represent objects in the context of cohesion violations?

Recent research suggests that witnessing events of fission (e.g., the splitting of a solid object) impairs human infants’, human adults’, and non-human primates’ object representations. The present studies investigated the reactions of gorillas and orangutans to cohesion violation across different types of fission events implementing a behavioral paradigm previously used with human infants. Results suggest that fission events vary in their impact on representational abilities but do not destroy apes’ representations of continuously existing objects.     

Grammatical pattern learning by human infants and cotton-top tamarin monkeys

There is a surprising degree of overlapping structure evident across the languages of the world. One factor leading to cross-linguistic similarities may be constraints on human learning abilities. Linguistic structures that are easier for infants to learn should predominate in human languages. If correct, then (a) human infants should more readily acquire structures that are consistent with the form of natural language, whereas (b) non-human primates' patterns of learning should be less tightly linked to the structure of human languages. Prior experiments have not directly compared laboratory-based learning of grammatical structures by human infants and non-human primates, especially under comparable testing conditions and with similar materials. Five experiments with 12-month-old human infants and adult cotton-top tamarin monkeys addressed these predictions, employing comparable methods (familiarization-discrimination) and materials. Infants rapidly acquired complex grammatical structures by using statistically predictive patterns, failing to learn structures that lacked such patterns. In contrast, the tamarins only exploited predictive patterns when learning relatively simple grammatical structures. Infant learning abilities may serve both to facilitate natural language acquisition and to impose constraints on the structure of human languages.     

The use of prosodic cues in language discrimination tasks by rats

Recent research with cotton-top tamarin monkeys has revealed language discrimination abilities similar to those found in human infants, demonstrating that these perceptual abilities are not unique to humans but are also present in non-human primates. Specifically, tamarins could discriminate forward but not backward sentences of Dutch from Japanese, using both natural and synthesized utterances. The present study was designed as a conceptual replication of the work on tamarins. Results show that rats trained in a discrimination learning task readily discriminate forward, but not backward sentences of Dutch from Japanese; the results are particularly robust for synthetic utterances, a pattern that shows greater parallels with newborns than with tamarins. Our results extend the claims made in the research with tamarins that the capacity to discriminate languages from different rhythmic classes depends on general perceptual abilities that evolved at least as far back as the rodents. Electronic Publication