Abstract
The literature has long emphasized the neocortex's role in volitional processes. In this work, we examined endogenous orienting in an evolutionarily older species, the archer fish, which lacks neocortex-like cells. We used Posner's classic endogenous cuing task, in which a centrally presented, spatially informative cue is followed by a target. The fish responded to the target by shooting a stream of water at it. Interestingly, the fish demonstrated a human-like “volitional” facilitation effect: their reaction times to targets that appeared on the side indicated by the precue were faster than their reaction times to targets on the opposite side. The fish also exhibited inhibition of return, an aftermath of orienting that commonly emerges only in reflexive orienting tasks in human participants. We believe that this pattern demonstrates the acquisition of an arbitrary connection between spatial orienting and a nonspatial feature of a centrally presented stimulus in nonprimate species. In the literature on human attention, orienting in response to such contingencies has been strongly associated with volitional control. We discuss the implications of these results for the evolution of orienting, and for the study of volitional processes in all species, including humans.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Proceedings of the 40th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2018 |
Publisher | The Cognitive Science Society |
Pages | 997-1001 |
Number of pages | 5 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9780991196784 |
State | Published - 2018 |
Event | 40th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Changing Minds, CogSci 2018 - Madison, United States Duration: 25 Jul 2018 → 28 Jul 2018 |
Publication series
Name | Proceedings of the 40th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2018 |
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Conference
Conference | 40th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Changing Minds, CogSci 2018 |
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Country/Territory | United States |
City | Madison |
Period | 25/07/18 → 28/07/18 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2018 Proceedings of the 40th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2018. All rights reserved.
Keywords
- IOR
- attention
- endogenous orienting
- subcortical regions
- volitional orienting
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Artificial Intelligence
- Computer Science Applications
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Cognitive Neuroscience