scholarly journals Transfer of spatial search between environments in human adults and young children (Homo sapiens): Implications for representation of local geometry by spatial systems

2013 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 421-434 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adina R. Lew ◽  
Barrie Usherwood ◽  
Frantzeska Fragkioudaki ◽  
Varvara Koukoumi ◽  
Shamus P. Smith ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Local Geometry ◽  
Spatial Search ◽  
Spatial Systems ◽  
Human Adults

Justifying “Wholesale Slaughter”

1975 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-258
Author(s):  
Donald VanDeVeer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Late Stage ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
The United States ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Recent Trial ◽  
The Law

In a recent trial in the United States a physician was convicted of manslaughter during the performance of a hysterotomy on a woman pregnant from twenty to twenty eight weeks. Some members of the jury, in their deliberations, were much impressed by seeing a photograph of a fetus of about the same age. The experience apparently provided some jurors with reason to conclude that the fetus which did die during or immediately after the hysterotomy was a human being or a person or, at least, was so like a child that the killing of it was prohibited by the law of homicide. If being a human being is not the same as being a pre-natal progeny of homo sapiens, it is difficult to understand how one could “tell by looking” whether the fetus is a human being. But the sight of a fetus of twenty weeks or longer does, I think, tempt us to think that from a moral standpoint we ought to extend the same treatment to such fetuses, or virtually the same, as we extend to newborn babies and young children. The visual similarities between middle or late stage fetuses and newborn babies is striking.

Exploring the Jastrow Illusion in Humans (Homo sapiens), Rhesus Monkeys (Macaca mulatta), and Capuchin Monkeys (Sapajus apella)

Perception ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (5) ◽  
pp. 367-385 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Agrillo ◽  
Michael J. Beran ◽  
Audrey E. Parrish
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Approach ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Rhesus Macaques ◽  
Size Difference ◽  
Capuchin Monkeys ◽  
Size Discrimination ◽  
Sapajus Apella ◽  
Show Evidence ◽  
Human Adults ◽  
And Performance

In the Jastrow size illusion, two vertically stacked but offset stimuli of identical size are misperceived such that the bottom stimulus is overestimated relative to the top stimulus due to their spatial layout. In this study, we explored whether nonhuman primates perceive this geometric illusion in the same manner as humans. Human adults, rhesus macaques, and capuchin monkeys were presented with a computerized size discrimination task including Jastrow illusion probe trials. Consistent with previous results, humans perceived the illusory stimuli, validating the current experimental approach. Adults selected the bottom figure as larger in illusion trials with identical shapes, and performance was facilitated in trials with a true size difference when the larger figure was positioned at bottom. Monkeys performed very well in trials with a true size difference including difficult discriminations (5% difference in stimuli size), but they did not show evidence of the Jastrow illusion. They were indifferent between top and bottom stimuli in the illusory arrangement, showing no evidence of a human-like (or reversed) bias. These results are considered in light of differences in perceptual processing across primates and in comparison to previous comparative studies of the Jastrow and other size illusions.

Reorienting When Cues Conflict

2008 ◽  
Vol 19 (12) ◽  
pp. 1301-1307 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristin R. Ratliff ◽  
Nora S. Newcombe
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Human Case ◽  
Geometric Module ◽  
Geometric Information ◽  
Adaptive Combination ◽  
Learning History ◽  
Spatial Reorientation ◽  
Human Adults ◽  
Geometric Cues ◽  
Small Room

Proponents of a geometric module claim that human adults accomplish spatial reorientation in a fundamentally different way than young children and non-human animals do. However, reporting two experiments that used a conflict paradigm, this article shows striking similarities between human adults and young children, as well as nonhuman animals. Specifically, Experiment 1 demonstrates that adults favor geometric information in a small room and rely on features in a larger room, whereas Experiment 2 demonstrates that experience in a larger room produces dominance of features over geometric cues in a small room—the first human case of reliance on features that contradict geometric information. Thus, use of features during reorientation depends on the size of the environment and learning history. These results clearly undermine the modularity claim and the view that feature use during reorientation is purely associative, and we discuss the findings within an adaptive-combination view, according to which a weighting system determines use of feature or geometric cues during reorientation.

scholarly journals Learning Non-Adjacent Dependencies Embedded in Sentences of an Artificial Language: When Learning Breaks Down (in press, JEP: LMC)

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Hao Wang ◽  
Toben Herbert Mintz
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Statistical Properties ◽  
Underlying Structure ◽  
Artificial Language ◽  
Learning Mechanisms ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Considerable Evidence ◽  
Additional Information ◽  
Human Adults

The structure of natural languages give rise to many dependencies in the linear sequences of words, and within words themselves. Detecting these dependencies is arguably critical for young children in learning the underlying structure of their language. There is considerable evidence that human adults and infants are sensitive to the statistical properties of sequentially adjacent items. However, the conditions under which learners detect non-adjacent dependencies (NADs) appears to be much more limited. This has resulted in proposals that the kinds of learning mechanisms learners deploy in processing adjacent dependencies are fundamentally different from those deployed in learning NADs. Here we challenge this view. In four experiments, we show that learning both kinds of dependencies is hindered in conditions when they are embedded in longer sequences of words, and facilitated when they are isolated by silences. We argue that the findings from the present study and prior research is consistent with a theory that similar mechanisms are deployed for adjacent and non-adjacent dependency learning, but that NAD learning is simply computationally more complex. Hence, in some situations NAD learning is only successful when constraining information is provided, but critically, that additional information benefits adjacent dependency learning in similar ways.

scholarly journals Do children estimate area using an ‘Additive-Area Heuristic’?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sami Ryan Yousif ◽  
Emma Alexandrov ◽  
Elizabeth Bennette ◽  
Richard Aslin ◽  
Frank Keil
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Human Adults ◽  
The Many ◽  
Number Perception ◽  
Better Than

A large and growing body of work has documented large, robust illusions of area perception in adults. To date, however, there has been surprisingly little in-depth investigation into children’s area perception, despite the importance of this topic to the study of quantity perception more broadly (and to the many studies that have been devoted to studying children’s number perception). Here, in order to understand the interactions of number and area on quantity perception, we study both dimensions in tandem. First, inspired by recent work showing that human adults appear to rely on an 'Additive Area Heuristic', we test whether children may rely on this same kind of heuristic. Indeed, ‘additive area’ explains children’s area judgments better than true, mathematical area. Second, we show that children’s use of ‘additive area’ biases number judgments. Finally, to isolate ‘additive area’ from number, we test children’s area perception in a task where number is held constant across all trials. We find something surprising: even when there is no overall effect of ‘additive area’ or ‘mathematical area’, individual children adopt, and stick to, specific strategies throughout the task. In other words, some children appear to rely on ‘additive area’, while others appear to rely on true, mathematical area — a pattern of results that may be best explained by a misunderstanding about the concept of cumulative area. We discuss how these findings raise both theoretical and practical challenges of studying quantity perception in young children.

scholarly journals Reconsideration of the Antiquity of the Middle Palaeolithic Footprints from Theopetra Cave (Thessaly, Greece)

2021 ◽  
pp. 169-182
Author(s):  
Nina Kyparissi-Apostolika ◽  
Sotiris K. Manolis
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
The Other ◽  
Middle Palaeolithic ◽  
Thermoluminescence Dating ◽  
Field Season ◽  
European Standards ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Different Characteristics ◽  
Excavation Site

AbstractDuring the 1996 field season, four footprints were found in undisturbed deposits at the borders of squares Θ10-I10 at a depth of 3.5 m at the Theopetra Cave excavation site. The footprints lie adjacent to an ash horizon that has been dated to ca ~135 ka. Two footprints in the trail are complete and measure 150.4 mm and 138.96 mm in length. Based on modern European standards, these lengths would be consistent with young children aged between 2 and 4 years old and 90–100 cm in stature. The two complete footprints, which follow each other in the trail, appear both to have been left feet. The partial print, which immediately precedes the two complete prints in the series, also appears to have been by a left foot. This suggests that what initially seems to be a single trail is actually a composite of two or more trails of prints. This hypothesis is supported by the different characteristics of the two complete prints. One is consistent with a bare foot and clearly shows the impressions of the toes, ball, arch and heel. The other is characterized by a simpler contour and is more sharply defined and indicates that the individual was wearing some kind of foot covering. An important question is what kind of hominid made the footprints? These footprints may have been made by Neanderthals or early Homo sapiens, based on thermoluminescence dating results.

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