utilizing-electroencephalography-measurements-for-comparison-task

Utilizing Electroencephalography Measurements for Comparison of Task-Specific Neural Efficiencies: Spatial Intelligence Tasks

Spatial intelligence is often linked to success in engineering education and engineering professions. The use of electroencephalography enables ...

Utah State University

Convergent evidence demonstrates that adult humans possess numerical representations that are independent of language [1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6]. Human infants and nonhuman animals can also make purely numerical discriminations, implicating both developmental and evolutionary bases for adult humans' language-independent representations of number [7 and 8]. Recent evidence suggests that the nonverbal representations of number held by human adults are not constrained by the sensory modality in which they were perceived [9]. Previous studies, however, have yielded conflicting results concerning whether the number representations held by nonhuman animals and human infants are tied to the modality in which they were established [10, 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15]. Here, we report that untrained monkeys preferentially looked at a dynamic video display depicting the number of conspecifics that matched the number of vocalizations they heard. These findings suggest that number representations held by monkeys, like those held by adult humans, are unfettered by stimulus modality.

Monkeys match the number of voices they hear to the number of faces they see.

Human infants can discriminate visual and auditory stimuli solely on the basis of number, suggesting a developmental foundation for the nonverbal number representations of adult humans. Recent studies suggest that these language-independent number representations are multisensory in both adult humans and nonhuman animals. Surprisingly, however, previous studies have yielded mixed evidence concerning whether nonverbal numerical representations independent of sensory modality are present early in human development. In this article, we use a paradigm that avoids stimulus confounds present in previous studies of cross-modal numerical mapping in infants. We show that 7-month-old infants preferentially attend to visual displays of adult humans that numerically match the number of adult humans they hear speaking. These data provide evidence that by 7 months of age, infants connect numerical representations across different sensory modalities when presented with human faces and voices. Results support the possibility of a shared system between preverbal infants and nonverbal animals for representing number.

The multisensory representation of number in infancy.

We present the results of two experiments that probe the ability of rhesus macaques to match visual arrays based on number. Three monkeys were first trained on a delayed match-to-sample paradigm (DMTS) to match stimuli on the basis of number and ignore continuous dimensions such as element size, cumulative surface area, and density. Monkeys were then tested in a numerical bisection experiment that required them to indicate whether a sample numerosity was closer to a small or large anchor value. Results indicated that, for two sets of anchor values with the same ratio, the probability of choosing the larger anchor value systematically increased with the sample number and the psychometric functions superimposed. A second experiment employed a numerical DMTS task in which the choice values contained an exact numerical match to the sample and a distracter that varied in number. Both accuracy and reaction time were modulated by the ratio between the correct numerical match and the distracter, as predicted by Weber's Law.

Weber's Law influences numerical representations in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta).

This study compared nonverbal numerical processing in 6-year-olds with that in nonhuman animals using a numerical bisection task. In the study, 16 children were trained on a delayed match-to-sample paradigm to match exemplars of two anchor numerosities. Children were then required to indicate whether a sample intermediate to the anchor values was closer to the small anchor value or the large anchor value. For two sets of anchor values with the same ratio, the probability of choosing the larger anchor value increased systematically with sample number, and the psychometric functions superimposed when plotted on a logarithmic scale. The psychometric functions produced by the children also superimposed with the psychometric functions produced by rhesus monkeys in an analogous previous experiment. These examples of superimposition demonstrate that nonverbal number representations, even in children who have acquired the verbal counting system, are modulated by Weber's law.

A common representational system governed by Weber's law: nonverbal numerical similarity judgments in 6-year-olds and rhesus macaques.

Intersensory redundancy can facilitate animal and human behavior in areas as diverse as rhythm discrimination, signal detection, orienting responses, maternal call learning, and associative learning. In the realm of numerical development, infants show similar sensitivity to numerical differences in both the visual and auditory modalities. Using a habituation-dishabituation paradigm, we ask here, whether providing redundant, multisensory numerical information allows six-month-old infants to make more precise numerical discriminations. Results indicate that perceptually redundant information improved preverbal numerical precision to a level of discrimination previously thought attainable only after additional months of development. Multimodal stimuli may thus boost abstract cognitive abilities such as numerical competence.

Intersensory redundancy accelerates preverbal numerical competence.

We report here that monkeys can actively match the number of sounds they hear to the number of shapes they see and present the first evidence that monkeys sum over sounds and sights. In Experiment 1, two monkeys were trained to choose a simultaneous array of 1-9 squares that numerically matched a sample sequence of shapes or sounds. Monkeys numerically matched across (audio-visual) and within (visual-visual) modalities with equal accuracy and transferred to novel numerical values. In Experiment 2, monkeys presented with sample sequences of randomly ordered shapes or tones were able to choose an array of 2-9 squares that was the numerical sum of the shapes and sounds in the sample sequence. In both experiments, accuracy and reaction time depended on the ratio between the correct numerical match and incorrect choice. These findings suggest monkeys and humans share an abstract numerical code that can be divorced from the modality in which stimuli are first experienced.

Monkeys match and tally quantities across senses.

Migraine, an open and shut case?

Previous studies have demonstrated that Weber's Law mediates quantitative discrimination abilities across various species. Here, we tested coyotes' (Canis latrans) ability to discriminate between various quantities of food and investigated whether this ability conforms to predictions of Weber's Law. We demonstrate herein that coyotes are capable of reliably discriminating large versus small quantities of discrete food items. As predicted by Weber's Law, coyotes' quantitative discrimination abilities are mediated by the ratio between the large and small quantities of food and exhibit scalar variability. Furthermore, in this task coyotes were not discriminating large versus small quantities based on olfactory cues alone.

Tracking of food quantity by coyotes (Canis latrans).

This study presents the first evidence that preschool children perform more accurately in a numerical matching task when given multisensory rather than unisensory information about number. Three- to 5-year-old children learned to play a numerical matching game on a touchscreen computer, which asked them to match a sample numerosity with a numerically equivalent choice numerosity. Samples consisted of a series of visual squares on some trials, a series of auditory tones on other trials, and synchronized squares and tones on still other trials. Children performed at chance on this matching task when provided with either type of unisensory sample, but improved significantly when provided with multisensory samples. There was no speed–accuracy tradeoff between unisensory and multisensory trial types. Thus, these findings suggest that intersensory redundancy may improve young children’s abilities to match numerosities.

Multisensory information boosts numerical matching abilities in young children.

One way to investigate the evolution of cognition is to compare the abilities of phylogenetically related species. The domestic dog (Canis lupus familiaris), for example, still shares cognitive abilities with the coyote (Canis latrans). Both of these canids possess the ability to make psychophysical "less/more" discriminations of food based on quantity. Like many other species including humans, this ability is mediated by Weber's Law: discrimination of continuous quantities is dependent on the ratio between the two quantities. As two simultaneously presented quantities of food become more similar, choice of the large or small option becomes random in both dogs and coyotes. It remains unknown, however, whether these closely related species within the same family - one domesticated, and one wild - make such quantitative comparisons with comparable accuracy. Has domestication honed or diminished this quantitative ability? Might different selective and ecological pressures facing coyotes drive them to be more or less able to accurately represent and discriminate food quantity than domesticated dogs? This study is an effort to elucidate this question concerning the evolution of non-verbal quantitative cognition. Here, we tested the quantitative discrimination ability of 16 domesticated dogs. Each animal was given nine trials in which two different quantities of food were simultaneously displayed to them. The domesticated dogs' performance on this task was then compared directly to the data from 16 coyotes' performance on this same task reported by Baker et al. (2011). The quantitative discrimination abilities between the two species were strikingly similar. Domesticated dogs demonstrated similar quantitative sensitivity as coyotes, suggesting that domestication may not have significantly altered the psychophysical discrimination abilities of canids. Instead, this study provides further evidence for similar non-verbal quantitative abilities across multiple species.

A shared system of representation governing quantity discrimination in canids.

Today's health care landscape requires expert nursing care for clients with dementia. Unfortunately, most nursing students dislike providing dementia care. Lack of students' self-efficacy may account for some of the negativity surrounding dementia care, and learning activities to increase self-efficacy may be one means for increasing positive feelings. The purpose of this article is to describe and evaluate a clinical learning activity designed to increase the self-efficacy of students in meeting the psychosocial needs of clients with dementia. The experience involved 39 baccalaureate nursing students and included the implementation of a therapeutic activity in a long-term care setting. Evaluation involved discussing the activity before and after implementation, observing the students perform the activity, administering a survey before and after the activity, and completing a clinical log addressing the major objectives. Evidence from the evaluation suggests that the experience promoted increased self-efficacy in students.

A clinical learning experience: enhancing baccalaureate nursing students' self-efficacy in meeting the psychosocial needs of clients with dementia.

Both time and numerosity can be represented continuously as analog properties whose discrimination conforms to Weber's Law, suggesting that the two properties may be represented similarly. Recent research suggests that the representation of time is influenced by the presence of emotional stimuli. If time and numerosity share a common cognitive representation, it follows that a similar relationship may exist between emotional stimuli and the representation of numerosity. Here, we provide evidence that emotional stimuli significantly affect humans' estimation of visual numerosity. During a numerical bisection task, enumeration of emotional stimuli (angry faces) was more accurate compared to enumeration of neutrally valenced stimuli (neutral faces), demonstrating that emotional stimuli affect humans' visual representation of numerosity as previously demonstrated for time. These results inform and broaden our understanding of the effect of negative emotional stimuli on psychophysical discriminations of quantity.

The impact of emotion on numerosity estimation.

Infants possess basic capabilities to assess various quantitative properties such as number, size, and time. Preverbal discriminations are approximate, however, and are similarly limited across these dimensions. Here, we present the first evidence that multiple sources of quantitative unisensory information about dynamic stimuli-namely, simultaneous visual cues to changes in both number and surface area-may accelerate 6-month-olds' quantitative competence. Using a habituation-dishabituation paradigm, results from Experiment 1 demonstrate that, when provided with such visual cues to multiple quantitative properties that occur in the same direction, infants make more precise discriminations than has been shown when they receive information about either cue alone. Moreover, Experiment 2 demonstrates that infants' discrimination also benefits from simultaneous visual cues to quantitative changes that occur in opposite directions. Finally, Experiment 3 demonstrates that these findings are not driven by infants' ability to discriminate a 2:3 ratio change in surface area of a dynamic stimulus alone. Thus, we hypothesize that enhanced quantitative discrimination occurs because simultaneous visual quantitative changes may be more salient than single-source information, which could better recruit attention and result in more precise learning and remembering.

Multiple visual quantitative cues enhance discrimination of dynamic stimuli during infancy.

Cognition presents evolutionary research with one of its greatest challenges. Cognitive evolution has been explained at the proximate level by shifts in absolute and relative brain volume and at the ultimate level by differences in social and dietary complexity. However, no study has integrated the experimental and phylogenetic approach at the scale required to rigorously test these explanations. Instead, previous research has largely relied on various measures of brain size as proxies for cognitive abilities. We experimentally evaluated these major evolutionary explanations by quantitatively comparing the cognitive performance of 567 individuals representing 36 species on two problem-solving tasks measuring self-control. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that absolute brain volume best predicted performance across species and accounted for considerably more variance than brain volume controlling for body mass. This result corroborates recent advances in evolutionary neurobiology and illustrates the cognitive consequences of cortical reorganization through increases in brain volume. Within primates, dietary breadth but not social group size was a strong predictor of species differences in self-control. Our results implicate robust evolutionary relationships between dietary breadth, absolute brain volume, and self-control. These findings provide a significant first step toward quantifying the primate cognitive phenome and explaining the process of cognitive evolution.

The evolution of self-control.

The benefits of visual exposure to natural environments for human well-being in areas of stress reduction, mood improvement, and attention restoration are well documented, but the effects of natural environments on impulsive decision-making remain unknown. Impulsive decision-making in delay discounting offers generality, predictive validity, and insight into decision-making related to unhealthy behaviors. The present experiment evaluated differences in such decision-making in humans experiencing visual exposure to one of the following conditions: natural (e.g., mountains), built (e.g., buildings), or control (e.g., triangles) using a delay discounting task that required participants to choose between immediate and delayed hypothetical monetary outcomes. Participants viewed the images before and during the delay discounting task. Participants were less impulsive in the condition providing visual exposure to natural scenes compared to built and geometric scenes. Results suggest that exposure to natural environments results in decreased impulsive decision-making relative to built environments.

The nature of impulsivity: visual exposure to natural environments decreases impulsive decision-making in a delay discounting task.

Falls are a common cause of serious injury and injury-related death in the older adult population, and may be associated with multiple risks such as age, history of falls, impaired mobility, balance and gait problems, and medications. Sensory and environmental factors as well as the fear of falling may also increase the risk of falls. The purpose of this article is to review current best practice on screening fall risks and fear of falling, fall prevention strategies, and fall prevention resources to assist gerontological nurses in reducing falls by their older adult clients.

Summary of factors contributing to falls in older adults and nursing implications.

Impulsivity in delay discounting is associated with maladaptive behaviors such as overeating and drug and alcohol abuse. Researchers have recently noted that delay discounting, even when measured by a brief laboratory task, may be the best predictor of human health related behaviors (e.g., exercise) currently available. Identifying techniques to decrease impulsivity in delay discounting, therefore, could help improve decision-making on a global scale. Visual exposure to natural environments is one recent approach shown to decrease impulsive decision-making in a delay discounting task, although the mechanism driving this result is currently unknown. The present experiment was thus designed to evaluate not only whether visual exposure to natural (mountains, lakes) relative to built (buildings, cities) environments resulted in less impulsivity, but also whether this exposure influenced time perception. Participants were randomly assigned to either a natural environment condition or a built environment condition. Participants viewed photographs of either natural scenes or built scenes before and during a delay discounting task in which they made choices about receiving immediate or delayed hypothetical monetary outcomes. Participants also completed an interval bisection task in which natural or built stimuli were judged as relatively longer or shorter presentation durations. Following the delay discounting and interval bisection tasks, additional measures of time perception were administered, including how many minutes participants thought had passed during the session and a scale measurement of whether time "flew" or "dragged" during the session. Participants exposed to natural as opposed to built scenes were less impulsive and also reported longer subjective session times, although no differences across groups were revealed with the interval bisection task. These results are the first to suggest that decreased impulsivity from exposure to natural as opposed to built environments may be related to lengthened time perception.

Article	Year
Monkeys match the number of voices they hear to the number of faces they see. Current biology : CB\| PubMed ID: 15936274	2005
The multisensory representation of number in infancy. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America\| PubMed ID: 16492785	2006
Weber's Law influences numerical representations in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta). Animal cognition\| PubMed ID: 16575587	2006
A common representational system governed by Weber's law: nonverbal numerical similarity judgments in 6-year-olds and rhesus macaques. Journal of experimental child psychology\| PubMed ID: 16808924	2006
Intersensory redundancy accelerates preverbal numerical competence. Cognition\| PubMed ID: 18226807	2008
Monkeys match and tally quantities across senses. Cognition\| PubMed ID: 18571636	2008
Migraine, an open and shut case? Practical neurology\| PubMed ID: 20498194	2010
Tracking of food quantity by coyotes (Canis latrans). Behavioural processes\| PubMed ID: 21856389	2011
Multisensory information boosts numerical matching abilities in young children. Developmental science\| PubMed ID: 22213895	2011
A shared system of representation governing quantity discrimination in canids. Frontiers in psychology\| PubMed ID: 23060847	2012
A clinical learning experience: enhancing baccalaureate nursing students' self-efficacy in meeting the psychosocial needs of clients with dementia. The Journal of nursing education\| PubMed ID: 23410253	2013
The impact of emotion on numerosity estimation. Frontiers in psychology\| PubMed ID: 23950754	2013
Multiple visual quantitative cues enhance discrimination of dynamic stimuli during infancy. Journal of experimental child psychology\| PubMed ID: 24518049	2014
The evolution of self-control. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America\| PubMed ID: 24753565	2014
The nature of impulsivity: visual exposure to natural environments decreases impulsive decision-making in a delay discounting task. PloS one\| PubMed ID: 24841421	2014
Summary of factors contributing to falls in older adults and nursing implications. Geriatric nursing (New York, N.Y.)\| PubMed ID: 26343008	2015
Making Time for Nature: Visual Exposure to Natural Environments Lengthens Subjective Time Perception and Reduces Impulsivity. PloS one\| PubMed ID: 26558610	2015

Kerry Jordan

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