Transfer of a serial representation between two distinct tasks by rhesus macaques.

ABSTRACT: Do animals form task-specific representations, or do those representations take a general form that can be applied to qualitatively different tasks? Rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) learned the ordering of stimulus lists using two different serial tasks, in order to test whether prior experience in each task could be transfered to the other, enhancing performance. The simultaneous chaining paradigm delivered rewards only after subjects responded in the correct order to all stimuli displayed on a touch sensitive video monitor. The transitive inference paradigm presented pairs of items and delivered rewards when subjects selected the item with the lower ordinal rank. After learning a list in one paradigm, subjects' knowledge of that list was tested using the other paradigm. Performance was en

SUBMITTER: Jensen G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3729468 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature