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ERIC Number: EJ1339125
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2022-Apr
Pages: 14
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: EISSN-1551-6709
EISSN: N/A
Learning Higher-Order Transitional Probabilities in Nonhuman Primates
Rey, Arnaud; Fagot, Joël; Mathy, Fabien; Lazartigues, Laura; Tosatto, Laure; Bonafos, Guillem; Freyermuth, Jean-Marc; Lavigne, Frédéric
Cognitive Science, v46 n4 e13121 Apr 2022
The extraction of cooccurrences between two events, A and B, is a central learning mechanism shared by all species capable of associative learning. Formally, the cooccurrence of events A and B appearing in a sequence is measured by the transitional probability (TP) between these events, and it corresponds to the probability of the second stimulus given the first (i.e., p(B|A)). In the present study, nonhuman primates (Guinea baboons, "Papio papio") were exposed to a serial version of the XOR (i.e., exclusive-OR), in which they had to process sequences of three stimuli: A, B, and C. In this manipulation, first-order TPs (i.e., AB and BC) were uninformative due to their transitional probabilities being equal to 0.5 (i.e., p(B|A) = p(C|B) = 0.5), while second-order TPs were fully predictive of the upcoming stimulus (i.e., p(C|AB) = 1). In Experiment 1, we found that baboons were able to learn second-order TPs, while no learning occurred on first-order TPs. In Experiment 2, this pattern of results was replicated, and a final test ruled out an alternative interpretation in terms of proximity to the reward. These results indicate that a nonhuman primate species can learn a nonlinearly separable problem such as the XOR. They also provide fine-grained empirical data to test models of statistical learning on the interaction between the learning of different orders of TPs. Recent bioinspired models of associative learning are also introduced as promising alternatives to the modeling of statistical learning mechanisms.
Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2191/en-us
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A