Somatosensation

Hermer-Vazquez, Linda; Hermer-Vazquez, Raymond; Chapin, John K.

doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195162851.003.0006

Cited by 9 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…The present results also support arguments that exposure to the spatial terms of their language can guide infants in forming particular spatial categories (Bowerman & Choi, 2001;Choi & Bowerman, 1991), although the present results pinpoint this effect more specifically to infants' ability to form these categories under more challenging conditions. At a broader level, the present results also align with arguments that acquiring spatial language serves to advance and at times restructure early concepts (Hermer-Vazquez, Moffet, & Munkholm, 2001;Xu, 2016). We expand on these views by raising the possibility that which spatial terms children acquire may shape how easily they generalize across diverse exemplars of a spatial relation to form an abstract spatial category.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

What Develops in Infants’ Spatial Categorization? Korean Infants’ Categorization of Containment and Tight‐Fit Relations

Casasola

Ahn

2017

Child Development

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Korean-learning infants' categorization of two spatial categories, one consistent and one inconsistent with the Korean semantic category of "kkita," was examined. Infants of 10 months (n = 32) and 18 months (n = 49) were tested on their categorization of containment or tight fit spatial relations. At 10 months, infants only formed a category of containment, but at 18 months, their categorization of tight fit was significantly stronger than containment. The results suggest that Korean infants benefit from their language environment in forming a category of tight fit when the exemplars are perceptually diverse. In particular, infants' language environment may bolster their ability to generalize across diverse exemplars to form abstract categorical representations of spatial relations.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

What Develops in Infants’ Spatial Categorization? Korean Infants’ Categorization of Containment and Tight‐Fit Relations

Casasola

Ahn

2017

Child Development

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“…Between 5 and 8 years of age, children's behaviour in reorientation tasks undergoes a qualitative change: instead of navigating separately by the shape of the environment and the position of a distinctive landmark, children begin to combine representations of surface layouts and landmark objects productively, so as to locate directly an object hidden at a particular distance and direction from a landmark [66,67]. This change occurs when children begin systematically to produce spatial expressions, including the terms left and right [66,68]. A recent study of adult speakers of an emerging language suggests that the acquisition of spatial language plays a causal role in the emergence of this new navigational pattern [69].…”

Section: Core Knowledge and Geometrical Intuitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Core systems of geometry in animal minds

Spelke

Lee

2012

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

112

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Research on humans from birth to maturity converges with research on diverse animals to reveal foundational cognitive systems in human and animal minds. The present article focuses on two such systems of geometry. One system represents places in the navigable environment by recording the distance and direction of the navigator from surrounding, extended surfaces. The other system represents objects by detecting the shapes of small-scale forms. These two systems show common signatures across animals, suggesting that they evolved in distant ancestral species. As children master symbolic systems such as maps and language, they come productively to combine representations from the two core systems of geometry in uniquely human ways; these combinations may give rise to abstract geometric intuitions. Studies of the ontogenetic and phylogenetic sources of abstract geometry therefore are illuminating of both human and animal cognition. Research on animals brings simpler model systems and richer empirical methods to bear on the analysis of abstract concepts in human minds. In return, research on humans, relating core cognitive capacities to symbolic abilities, sheds light on the content of representations in animal minds.Keywords: cognitive development; animal cognition; navigation; geometry CORE COGNITIVE SYSTEMS IN ANIMAL MINDSFor well over 2000 years, studies of higher cognition have focused primarily on capacities that are unique to humans, such as language and geometrical intuitions. Debates about the nature and sources of these capacities continue to the present day, however, and progress in resolving them pales by contrast with the progress achieved in understanding the perceptual capacities that humans share with other animals. This contrast highlights problems faced by attempts to study higher cognition in any species, and it hints at a solution to those problems.The modern study of perception began with research on humans, who experimented on themselves to probe the physical events that evoke conscious experiences of colour, tone or motion. The power of these 'psychophysical experiments' was greatly enhanced, however, by parallel research on animals. Studies of perception in humans and in other animals were mutually illuminating: while human psychophysical findings guided research on animal perceptual systems, animal research shed light on the development and architecture of those systems, using methods of controlled rearing, neurophysiology and (more recently) genetics. Research from evolutionary biology and computer science enriched both sets of insights, by shedding light on the computational problems that visual systems evolved to solve.The study of higher cognition has not experienced the same synergies. Indeed, attempts to use human conscious experience as a guide to animal research often lead to blind alleys, because human intuition is a poor source of insights into animal minds. This failure stems, we suggest, from three prominent differences between perceptual systems, on one hand, and higher cognitive...

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“…On one hand, as noted above, comparative cognition research has suggested that conjoining of geometric and nongeometric information can be achieved in several species, irrespective of possession of a verbal language (one very interesting suggestion put forward by Spelke, 1994, 1996, is in fact that language can serve as the medium to integrate information from different modules; see also Hermer-Vasquez, Spelke, & Katsnelson, 1999;Hermer-Vasquez, Moffet, & Munkholm, 2001). On the other hand, a weaker version of modularity can be claimed for based on the observation of a ''primacy'' of geometric information over nongeometric information.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Separate Geometric and Non-Geometric Modules for Spatial Reorientation: Evidence from a Lopsided Animal Brain

Vallortígara

Pagni

Sovrano

2004

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

102

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Research has proved that disoriented children and nonhuman animals can reorient themselves using geometric and nongeometric features of the environment, showing conjoined use of both types of information to different degree depending on species and developmental level. Little is known of the neurobiological bases of these spatial reorientation processes. Here we take advantage of the neuroanatomical peculiarities of the visual system of birds (showing segregation of information between the two sides of the brain to a considerable degree) to investigate the way in which geometric and nongeometric information is encoded and used by the left and right hemispheres. Domestic chicks were trained binocularly in an environment with a distinctive geometry (a rectangular cage) with panels at the corners providing nongeometric cues. Between trials, chicks were passively disoriented to disable dead reckoning. When tested after removal of the panels, left-eyed chicks, but not right-eyed chicks, reoriented using the residual information provided by the geometry of the cage. When tested after removal of geometric information (i.e., in a square-shaped cage), both right- and left-eyed chicks reoriented using the residual nongeometric information provided by the panels. When trained binocularly with only geometric information, at test, left-eyed chicks reoriented better than right-eyed chicks. Finally, when geometric and nongeometric cues provided contradictory information, left-eyed chicks showed more reliance on geometric cues, whereas right-eyed chicks showed more reliance on nongeometric cues. The results suggest separate mechanisms for dealing with spatial reorientation problems, with the right hemisphere taking charge of large-scale geometry of the environment and with both hemispheres taking charge of local, nongeometric cues when available in isolation, but with a predominance of the left hemisphere when competition between geometric and non-geometric information occurs.

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Somatosensation

Cited by 9 publications

References 20 publications

What Develops in Infants’ Spatial Categorization? Korean Infants’ Categorization of Containment and Tight‐Fit Relations

What Develops in Infants’ Spatial Categorization? Korean Infants’ Categorization of Containment and Tight‐Fit Relations

Core systems of geometry in animal minds

Separate Geometric and Non-Geometric Modules for Spatial Reorientation: Evidence from a Lopsided Animal Brain

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