University of Padua

Relative numerical middle in rhesus monkeys

Rugani, Rosa and Platt, Michael and Chen, Zhaoying and Brannon, Elizabeth M (2021) Relative numerical middle in rhesus monkeys. [Data Collection]

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Animals show vast numerical competence in tasks that require both ordinal and cardinal numerical representations, but few studies have addressed whether animals can identify the numerical middle in a sequence. Two rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) learned to select the middle dot in a horizontal sequence of three dots on a touchscreen. When subsequently presented with longer sequences composed of 5, 7 or 9 items, monkeys transferred the middle rule. Accuracy decreased as the length of the sequence increased. In a second test, we presented monkeys with asymmetrical sequences composed by nine items, where the numerical and spatial middle were distinct and both monkeys selected the numerical middle over the spatial middle. Our results demonstrate that rhesus macaques can extract an abstract rule to bisect a discrete set of items.

DOI: 10.25430/researchdata.cab.unipd.it.00000527
Keywords: Number bisection, middle, rhesus monkeys, comparative cognition, center, abstract concepts
Subjects: Social Sciences and Humanities > The Human Mind and Its Complexity: Cognitive science, psychology, linguistics, philosophy of mind > Learning, memory; cognition in ageing
Department: Departments > Dipartimento di Psicologia Generale (DPG)
Depositing User: Rosa Rugani
Date Deposited: 24 Aug 2021 08:22
Last Modified: 30 May 2023 11:01
Creators/Authors:
CreatorsEmailORCID
Rugani, Rosarosa.rugani@unipd.itorcid.org/0000-0001-5294-6306
Platt, Michaelmplatt@pennmedicine.upenn.eduorcid.org/0000-0003-3912-8821
Chen, Zhaoyingzyc95@upenn.eduorcid.org/0000-0002-2231-7135
Brannon, Elizabeth Mebrannon@psych.upenn.eduUNSPECIFIED
Type of data: Database
Research funder: European’s Union Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie
Research project title: At the roots of Spatial Numerical Association: from behavioural observation to Neural Basis
Grant number: 795242
Collection period:
FromTo
May 2019August 2020
Resource language: English
Metadata language: English
Publisher: Research Data Unipd
Related publications:
Date: 12 August 2021
Copyright holders: The Author
URI: https://researchdata.cab.unipd.it/id/eprint/527

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