Authors: Joël Fagot Elodie Bonté Carole Parron
Publish Date: 2008/10/17
Volume: 12, Issue: 2, Pages: 369-379
Abstract
How nonhuman primates process pictures of natural scenes or objects remains a matter of debates This issue was addressed in the current research by questioning the processing of the canonical orientation of pictures in baboons Two adult guinea baboons were trained to use an interactive key IK on a touchscreen to change the orientation of target pictures showing humans or quadruped mammals until upright In experiment 1 both baboons successfully learned to use the IK when that key induced a 90° rightward rotation of the picture but posttraining transfer of performance did not occur to novel pictures of natural scenes due to potential motor biases In Experiment 2 a touch on IK randomly displayed the pictures in any of the four cardinal orientations Baboons successfully learned the task but transfer to novel pictures could only be demonstrated after they had been exposed to 360–480 pictures in that condition Experiment 3 confirmed positive transfers to novel pictures and showed that both the figure and background information controlled the behavior Our research on baboons therefore demonstrates the development and use of an “upright” concept and indicates that picture processing modes strongly depend on the subject’s past experience with naturalistic pictorial stimuliDany Palleressompoulle is acknowledged for electronical support Marc Martin is acknowledged for technical contribution Dany JF and CP were supported by the EC SEDSU grant 012984 and OMLL program This work received an agreement from the “Comité regional d’éthique pour l’expérimentation animale”
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