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Processamento multimodale delle informazioni nel pulcino di pollo domestico (Gallus gallus): ruolo delle predisposizioni e delle abilità cognitive precoci
No full textIn un mondo in continua evoluzione e mutamento risulta cruciale per la sopravvivenza essere in grado di processare e rispondere velocemente a nuove situazioni. Tuttavia, la quantità e la varietà di input sensoriali che arrivano dall’ambiente esterno eccedono notevolmente le capacità di processamento del cervello. Per poter far fronte a tale limite, gli animali possono implementare diversi meccanismi atti a selezionare le sole informazioni rilevanti. Nonostante alcuni di questi meccanismi siano vincolati da una notevole richiesta energetica, sia in termini fisici che cognitivi, vi sono altri meccanismi che si basano su predisposizioni cognitive, bias attentivi e specializzazioni emisferiche. Questi possono essere messi in atto spontaneamente dagli animali e richiedono un minimo, se non nullo, costo energetico. Il presente lavoro è dedicato allo studio dei meccanismi precoci che vengono utilizzati dagli animali per garantire un primo scambio positivo con l’ambiente. Il modello di ricercar selezionato, ovvero il pulcino di pollo domestico (Gallus gallus) risulta ottimale per questo scopo. Infatti, essendo una specie precoce, il pulcino deve essere in grado di interagire autonomamente con l’ambiente già dai primi istanti dopo la schiusa, rendendo quindi possibile lo studio delle capacità cognitive precoci e delle predisposizioni innate nel processamento delle informazioni. La Sezione 1 è dedicata alla integrazione spontanea delle informazioni multimodali. In particolare, vengono analizzati tre casi di integrazione delle informazioni provenienti da diverse modalità sensoriali: l’acquisizione spontanea di regole condizionali in memorial a lungo termine (Studio 1), la predisposizione a elaborare congiuntamente informazioni non ridondanti, con particolare riferimento al caso delle corrispondenze crossmodali visuospaziali (Studio 2) e l’effetto di facilitazione risultante dal possedere un codice di rappresentazione innato che associa informazioni spaziali e numeriche. La Sezione 2 è dedicata allo studio della selezione della modalità di processamento e delle conseguenti strategie cognitive attutate dall’animale. Infatti, è fondamentale, per garantire il successo nell’interazione con l’ambiente esterno, saper selezionare la modalità di processamento ottimale all’interno di un repertorio di possibili alternative. Lo Studio 4 analizza un caso di meccanismo di processamento percettivo basato sul raggruppamento che permette a pulcini di un giorno di vita di risolvere complesse discriminazioni numeriche. Lo Studio 5 approfondisce lo sviluppo e il funzionamento di tale meccanismo, mostrando come i pulcini siano in grado di selezionare un meccanismo basato sull’analisi percettiva o della grandezza numerica, in base ad un’analisi congiunta dei loro obiettivi interni e delle richieste ambientali. In conclusione, questo lavoro mostra come i piccoli di pollo domestico siano in grado di estrapolare informazioni multimodali e unimodali in diverse situazioni sperimentali in cui non vi è alcun addestramento formale (dunque in maniera spontanea ed automatica). Si è visto inoltre come i pulcini siano in grado di processare mentalmente tali informazioni (in maniera congiunta o unimodale) e di utilizzare la corrispondente rappresentazione mentale per rispondere adeguatamente alle diverse richieste dell’ambiente.In a world that continues to evolve and change, it is crucial for animals’ survival to quickly process and respond to novel situations. Yet, the amount and variety of sensory input coming from the environment greatly exceeds the brain’s processing capacity. To overcome this limit, animals can implement several mechanisms to select and prioritize relevant information. Whereas some of these mechanisms require a considerable effort, both in terms of physical and cognitive resources, others rely on cognitive predispositions, attentional biases, or hemispheric specializations, and can be spontaneously employed by the animals with little or no costs. This work focuses on the precocial mechanisms that favour an initial positive interplay with the environment. The selected model species, the domestic chicken (Gallus gallus) is considered optimal to this aim, as being precocial species, young chicks must be able to interact autonomously with the environment immediately after hatching, thus making it possible for us to study the very early stages of cognition and spontaneous information-processing mechanisms. Section 1 focuses on spontaneous multimodal information integration. In particular, three cases of multimodal information integration are investigated: the spontaneous acquisition of a visuospatial conditioned rule in long-term memory (Study 1), the predisposition to match non-redundant multimodal information with respect to the case of visuospatial crossmodal correspondences (Study 2), and the facilitation effect resulting from a spontaneous precocial association between spatial and numerical information (Study 3). Section 2 focuses on processing modality selection and strategies. A crucial ability to ensure a successful interaction with the environment is that of selecting the optimal processing modality and cognitive strategy among a repertoire of possible alternatives. Study 4 provides evidence of a non-mathematical mechanism based on perceptual grouping on which 1-day-old chicks can rely to solve complex numerical discrimination. Study 5 further deepens the emergence and functioning of such a mechanism, showing that chicks are capable of selecting a perceptual-based or a magnitude-based mechanism depending on a joint analysis of their internal goals and environmental settings. Overall, chicks proved capable of extracting multimodal and unimodal information in several unsupervised (i.e., in the absence of any formal training or experience) situations and of relying on the corresponding mental representations to solve different tasks successfully
Young chicks rely on symmetry/asymmetry in perceptual grouping to discriminate sets of elements
No full textGrouping sets of elements into smaller, equal-sized, subsets constitutes a perceptual strategy employed by humans and other animals to enhance cognitive performance. Here, we show that day-old chicks can solve extremely complex numerical discriminations (Exp.1), and that their performance can be enhanced by the presence of symmetrical/asymmetrical colour grouping (Exp.2 versus Exp.3). Newborn chicks were habituated for 1 h to even numerosities (sets of elements presented on a screen) and then tested for their spontaneous choice among what for humans would be considered a prime and a non-prime odd numerosity. Chicks discriminated and preferred the prime over the composite set of elements irrespective of its relative magnitude (i.e. 7 versus 9 and 11 versus 9). We discuss this result in terms of novelty preference. By employing a more complex contrast (i.e. 13 versus 15), we investigated the limits of such a mechanism and showed that induced grouping positively affects chicks' performance. Our results suggest the existence of a spontaneous mechanism that enables chicks to create symmetrical (i.e. same-sized) subgroups of sets of elements. Chicks preferentially inspected numerosities for which same-sized grouping is never possible (i.e. the prime numerosity) rather than numerosities allowing for symmetrical grouping (i.e. composite)
Through an animal’s eye: the implications of diverse sensory systems in scientific experimentation
Full text link'Accounting for the sensory abilities of animals is critical in experimental design.' No researcher would disagree with this statement, yet it is often the case that we inadvertently fall for anthropocentric biases and use ourselves as the reference point. This paper discusses the risks of adopting an anthropocentric view when working with non-human animals, and the unintended consequences this has on our experimental designs and results. To this aim, we provide general examples of anthropocentric bias from different fields of animal research, with a particular focus on animal cognition and behaviour, and lay out the potential consequences of adopting a human-based perspective. Knowledge of the sensory abilities, both in terms of similarities to humans and peculiarities of the investigated species, is crucial to ensure solid conclusions. A more careful consideration of the diverse sensory systems of animals would improve many scientific fields and enhance animal welfare in the laboratory
Independence and synergy of spatial attention in the two visual systems of jumping spiders
No full textBy selectively focusing on a specific portion of the environment, animals can solve the problem of information overload, toning down irrelevant inputs and concentrating only on the relevant ones. This may be of particular relevance for animals such as the jumping spider, which possess a wide visual field of almost 360 deg and thus could benefit from a low-cost system for sharpening attention. Jumping spiders have a modular visual system composed of four pairs of eyes, of which only the two frontal eyes (the anteromedial eyes, AMEs) are motile, whereas the other secondary pairs remain immobile. We hypothesised that jumping spiders can exploit both principal and secondary eyes for stimulus detection and attentional shift, with the two systems working synergistically. In experiment 1, we investigated the attentional responses of AMEs following a spatial cue presented to the secondary eyes. In experiment 2, we tested for enhanced attention in the secondary eyes’ visual field congruent with the direction of the AMEs’ focus. In both experiments, we observed that animals were faster and more accurate in detecting a target when it appeared in a direction opposite to that of the initial cue. In contrast with our initial hypothesis, these results would suggest that attention is segregated across eyes, with each system working on compensating the other by attending to different spatial locations
A symmetry-based mechanism for perceptual grouping in preverbal infants
Full text linkAbstract Newborn chicks can solve complex numerical discriminations through a purely perceptual mechanism based on the possibility of creating all equal-sized subsets. The present work investigates whether this is a prerogative of precocial birds or whether an analogous mechanism can be found in humans. We familiarized 8-month-olds with sets of even numerosities (i.e., decomposable in equal-sized subsets), and then we tested them for their spontaneous preference between two novel sets, one that cannot be divided into equal-sized subsets (i.e., a prime numerosity) and one decomposable in equal-sized subsets (i.e., a non-prime odd numerosity). Infants were tested with either the 7vs.9 comparison (i.e., the prime being smaller) or the 9vs.11 comparison (i.e., the prime being larger). Infants oriented their gaze more often toward the prime set of elements, irrespective of whether it was smaller or larger in the comparison, similar to the preference observed in baby chicks. Overall, our results suggest an early-emerging perceptual mechanism that can support complex numerical discriminations, that might be shared between distantly related and ecologically different species
Crossmodal association between visual and acoustic cues in a tortoise (Testudo hermanni)
Full text link: Humans spontaneously match information coming from different senses, in what we call crossmodal associations. For instance, high-pitched sounds are preferentially associated with small objects, and low-pitched sounds with larger ones. Although previous studies reported crossmodal associations in mammalian species, evidence for other taxa is scarce, hindering an evolutionary understanding of this phenomenon. Here, we provide evidence of pitch-size correspondence in a reptile, the tortoise Testudo hermanni. Tortoises showed a spontaneous preference to associate a small disc (i.e. visual information about size) with a high-pitch sound (i.e. auditory information) and a larger disc to a low-pitched sound. These results suggest that crossmodal associations may be an evolutionary ancient phenomenon, potentially an organizing principle of the vertebrate brain
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
A strategy to improve arithmetical performance in four day-old domestic chicks (Gallus gallus).
Full text linkrevious studies demonstrated that newly hatched domestic chicks reared with identical objects, when presented with objects disappearing one-by-one in separate locations, were able to compute the overall amount of objects present at each location as they successfully inspected the location concealing the larger set in the numerical comparisons 2 vs. 3 and 2 vs. 4. Here, we investigated the upper limits of this ability. Chicks were reared with 7 identical red objects and, on day 4 of life, they were tested with the comparison 3 vs. 4. In Experiment 1, when the objects were presented and hidden one-by-one, chicks could not discriminate among the two locations (M = 55.000; SEM = 2.500; p = 0.856; t(7) = 2.000). In Experiment 2, when objects were presented and hidden as chunked into (2 + 1) vs. (2 + 2) units, chicks succeeded in discriminating and inspected the location hiding the larger group (M = 72.000; SEM = 7.010; p = 0.014; t(7) = 3.210), i.e. the four objects. Overall these data suggest that presentation modality significantly affects the performance and confirm that a mechanism such as chunking can improve mathematical performance in an animal model
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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