Endogenous orienting in the archer fish

William Saban, Liora Sekely, Raymond M. Klein, Shai Gabay

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

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 languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 40th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2018
PublisherThe Cognitive Science Society
Pages997-1001
Number of pages5
ISBN (Electronic)9780991196784
StatePublished - 2018
Event40th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Changing Minds, CogSci 2018 - Madison, United States
Duration: 25 Jul 201828 Jul 2018

Publication series

NameProceedings of the 40th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2018

Conference

Conference40th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Changing Minds, CogSci 2018
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityMadison
Period25/07/1828/07/18

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

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