 | This article provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject.(November 2023) |
Object Skill is the kind of skill that helps humans and animals accelerate the speed of finding certain desirable objects, thereby reducing the reward delay in this process. Along with action skill, it is an essential component of any reward-directed skills.
Evolutionarily speaking, more rewards per unit time would mean better chance of survival and success to both humans and animals. In order to speed up reward-oriented behaviors and thereby maximizing rewards per unit time, humans and animals mainly rely on two mechanisms. They either boost up their motivation for certain behaviors or acquire skills of these behaviors. While motivation can be initiated quickly at presence of rewards and thus has an advantage of flexibility, it tends to fade away quickly without rewards. Skill, on the other hand, appears to be much more effective in reducing the duration of target behaviors [1] and has a stable effect even when no short-term reward is expected at all. This kind of reward-oriented skill is made up with two parts: finding an object and acting on it, the former being object skill and the latter action skill. Therefore, object skill is crucial in helping humans and animals maximizing their chance of survival and success.
Object skill is usually distinctly characterized by several features, including relatively stable internal value assignment, gaze and attention bias towards desired objects, automaticity of response towards desired objects, dependence on high-capacity memory and long-term nature of its effect. [2]
In everyday life, people learn values of objects according to the corresponding rewarding or punishing results of choosing these objects. Their ability of finding good objects therefore depends on this kind of value-based learning, [3] [4] where consistency plays an important role. As a result of this comparatively consistent object-value mapping across people's lifespan, their internal value assignment to objects tends to be stable.
Both humans and animals use senses across different modalities to find objects; however, humans mainly rely on visual information to identify objects. Studies have shown that gaze or attention shift to desired objects always precedes any possible manual action performed on these objects. [5] [6] [7] Remarkably, this gaze or attention shift occurs regardless of current intention of the initiator. [7] This automatic gaze or attention shift is pronounced even when no reward is expected, potentially increasing the subject's chance of survival in some critical circumstances. [2]
Studies have shown that when humans have extensively learned to find some particular objects, they start to recruit much less cognitive resource in order to finish the task. [8] [9] A study on monkeys with free-viewing procedure for testing gaze shift bias has also provided evidence to support the involuntary nature of object skill. [10] According to this study, monkeys neatly fixed their gazes only at objects with higher values learned in previous training. [10] This seems rather implausible to be accomplished through voluntary searching mechanism, given the limited space of working memory. On the other hand, faster responsivity of automatic search over voluntary search seems to be as well favored in terms of maximizing amount of reward per time unit. Thus, automaticity of response also plays a vital part in object skill.
Just like any other skills, two aspects of object skill matter most: accuracy and speed. [2] Accuracy is assured only if every memory-motor connection is unique, and speed is assured only if object-value information is quickly transmitted through memory-motor connections. [2] Under such scheme, high-capacity memory seems to be a necessity in response to demand for distinct memory slots for every object-value association.
Object skill also tends to have a long-term effect over object perception of both humans and monkeys. Results of several studies have shown that both humans and monkeys maintain their value-based gaze bias for a long time after the initial acquisition of such bias during training. [11] Another study on monkeys looked specifically at monkeys' response to objects very similar to ones associated with high values learned during training. The results showed that monkeys were highly responsive only to objects with high values as learned in the past, suggesting a highly object-selective object-value memory, which provides evidence for object skill's dependence of high-capacity memory. [11] And since high-capacity memory could be created only if each memory had been retained for a long time, it is now fairly clear that object skill could only be created slowly and would remain stable once created. [2]
Due to its automatic and inflexible nature, object skill can be detrimental when changes happen. When values of objects change from positive to negative, quick motor response associated with object skill still occurs and might thus undermine the subject. Object skill also tends to account for the case of drug abuse, where abusers can't help but associate substances with high values as a result of their previous experience, even knowing the danger of abusing drugs. [12] One of the possible solutions involves recruiting another system that pays attention to changes in object values. [2] Such a system would be voluntary and slow, but the expense of maintaining this system could be compensated by avoiding potential costly dangers. The core issue then would be to figure out an optimal balance between relying on object skill and referring to local changes.
Animal communication is the transfer of information from one or a group of animals to one or more other animals that affects the current or future behavior of the receivers. Information may be sent intentionally, as in a courtship display, or unintentionally, as in the transfer of scent from predator to prey with kairomones. Information may be transferred to an "audience" of several receivers. Animal communication is a rapidly growing area of study in disciplines including animal behavior, sociology, neurology and animal cognition. Many aspects of animal behavior, such as symbolic name use, emotional expression, learning and sexual behavior, are being understood in new ways.
The parietal lobe is one of the four major lobes of the cerebral cortex in the brain of mammals. The parietal lobe is positioned above the temporal lobe and behind the frontal lobe and central sulcus.
Dog intelligence or dog cognition is the process in dogs of acquiring information and conceptual skills, and storing them in memory, retrieving, combining and comparing them, and using them in new situations.
Curiosity is a quality related to inquisitive thinking such as exploration, investigation, and learning, evident in humans and animals. Curiosity helps human development, from which derives the process of learning and desire to acquire knowledge and skill.
Motivational salience is a cognitive process and a form of attention that motivates or propels an individual's behavior towards or away from a particular object, perceived event or outcome. Motivational salience regulates the intensity of behaviors that facilitate the attainment of a particular goal, the amount of time and energy that an individual is willing to expend to attain a particular goal, and the amount of risk that an individual is willing to accept while working to attain a particular goal.
The pars reticulata (SNpr) is a portion of the substantia nigra and is located lateral to the pars compacta. Most of the neurons that project out of the pars reticulata are inhibitory GABAergic neurons.
Delayed gratification, or deferred gratification, is the resistance to the temptation of an immediate pleasure in the hope of obtaining a valuable and long-lasting reward in the long-term. In other words, delayed gratification describes the process that the subject undergoes when the subject resists the temptation of an immediate reward in preference for a later reward that is more favorable. Generally, delayed gratification is associated with resisting a smaller but more immediate reward in order to receive a larger or more enduring reward later. A growing body of literature has linked the ability to delay gratification to a host of other positive outcomes, including academic success, physical health, psychological health, and social competence.
Inhibition of return (IOR) refers to an orientation mechanism that briefly enhances the speed and accuracy with which an object is detected after the object is attended, but then impairs detection speed and accuracy. IOR is usually measured with a cue-response paradigm, in which a person presses a button when they detect a target stimulus following the presentation of a cue that indicates the location in which the target will appear. The cue can be exogenous, or endogenous. Inhibition of return results from oculomotor activation, regardless of whether it was produced by exogenous signals or endogenously. Although IOR occurs for both visual and auditory stimuli, IOR is greater for visual stimuli, and is studied more often than auditory stimuli.
The habenula is a small bilateral neuronal structure in the brain of vertebrates, that has also been called a microstructure since it is no bigger than a pea. The naming as little rein describes its elongated shape in the epithalamus, where it borders the third ventricle, and lies in front of the pineal gland.
In cognitive science and neuropsychology, executive functions are a set of cognitive processes that are necessary for the cognitive control of behavior: selecting and successfully monitoring behaviors that facilitate the attainment of chosen goals. Executive functions include basic cognitive processes such as attentional control, cognitive inhibition, inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. Higher-order executive functions require the simultaneous use of multiple basic executive functions and include planning and fluid intelligence.
Supplementary eye field (SEF) is the name for the anatomical area of the dorsal medial frontal lobe of the primate cerebral cortex that is indirectly involved in the control of saccadic eye movements. Evidence for a supplementary eye field was first shown by Schlag, and Schlag-Rey. Current research strives to explore the SEF's contribution to visual search and its role in visual salience. The SEF constitutes together with the frontal eye fields (FEF), the intraparietal sulcus (IPS), and the superior colliculus (SC) one of the most important brain areas involved in the generation and control of eye movements, particularly in the direction contralateral to their location. Its precise function is not yet fully known. Neural recordings in the SEF show signals related to both vision and saccades somewhat like the frontal eye fields and superior colliculus, but currently most investigators think that the SEF has a special role in high level aspects of saccade control, like complex spatial transformations, learned transformations, and executive cognitive functions.
Salience is the property by which some thing stands out. Salient events are an attentional mechanism by which organisms learn and survive; those organisms can focus their limited perceptual and cognitive resources on the pertinent subset of the sensory data available to them.
Fixation or visual fixation is the maintaining of the gaze on a single location. An animal can exhibit visual fixation if it possess a fovea in the anatomy of their eye. The fovea is typically located at the center of the retina and is the point of clearest vision. The species in which fixational eye movement has been verified thus far include humans, primates, cats, rabbits, turtles, salamanders, and owls. Regular eye movement alternates between saccades and visual fixations, the notable exception being in smooth pursuit, controlled by a different neural substrate that appears to have developed for hunting prey. The term "fixation" can either be used to refer to the point in time and space of focus or the act of fixating. Fixation, in the act of fixating, is the point between any two saccades, during which the eyes are relatively stationary and virtually all visual input occurs. In the absence of retinal jitter, a laboratory condition known as retinal stabilization, perceptions tend to rapidly fade away. To maintain visibility, the nervous system carries out a procedure called fixational eye movement, which continuously stimulates neurons in the early visual areas of the brain responding to transient stimuli. There are three categories of fixational eye movement: microsaccades, ocular drifts, and ocular microtremor. At small amplitudes the boundaries between categories become unclear, particularly between drift and tremor.
In psychology, impulsivity is a tendency to act on a whim, displaying behavior characterized by little or no forethought, reflection, or consideration of the consequences. Impulsive actions are typically "poorly conceived, prematurely expressed, unduly risky, or inappropriate to the situation that often result in undesirable consequences," which imperil long-term goals and strategies for success. Impulsivity can be classified as a multifactorial construct. A functional variety of impulsivity has also been suggested, which involves action without much forethought in appropriate situations that can and does result in desirable consequences. "When such actions have positive outcomes, they tend not to be seen as signs of impulsivity, but as indicators of boldness, quickness, spontaneity, courageousness, or unconventionality." Thus, the construct of impulsivity includes at least two independent components: first, acting without an appropriate amount of deliberation, which may or may not be functional; and second, choosing short-term gains over long-term ones.
Joint attention or shared attention is the shared focus of two individuals on an object. It is achieved when one individual alerts another to an object by means of eye-gazing, pointing or other verbal or non-verbal indications. An individual gazes at another individual, points to an object and then returns their gaze to the individual. Scaife and Bruner were the first researchers to present a cross-sectional description of children's ability to follow eye gaze in 1975. They found that most eight- to ten-month-old children followed a line of regard, and that all 11- to 14-month-old children did so. This early research showed it was possible for an adult to bring certain objects in the environment to an infant's attention using eye gaze.
Cultural neuroscience is a field of research that focuses on the interrelation between a human's cultural environment and neurobiological systems. The field particularly incorporates ideas and perspectives from related domains like anthropology, psychology, and cognitive neuroscience to study sociocultural influences on human behaviors. Such impacts on behavior are often measured using various neuroimaging methods, through which cross-cultural variability in neural activity can be examined.
The effects of sleep deprivation on cognitive performance encompass a broad range of impairments in various cognitive functions resulting from inadequate or insufficient sleep, impacting areas such as attention, memory, decision-making, and reaction time.
The study of memory incorporates research methodologies from neuropsychology, human development and animal testing using a wide range of species. The complex phenomenon of memory is explored by combining evidence from many areas of research. New technologies, experimental methods and animal experimentation have led to an increased understanding of the workings of memory.
In cognitive psychology, intertrial priming is an accumulation of the priming effect over multiple trials, where "priming" is the effect of the exposure to one stimulus on subsequently presented stimuli. Intertrial priming occurs when a target feature is repeated from one trial to the next, and typically results in speeded response times to the target. A target is the stimulus participants are required to search for. For example, intertrial priming occurs when the task is to respond to either a red or a green target, and the response time to a red target is faster if the preceding trial also has a red target.
Okihide Hikosaka is a neuroscience research professor who specializes in the mechanisms of motivation, learning, skill, decision-making, attention, and oculomotor control. His research into neuronal mechanisms of voluntary behavior and basal ganglia function created breakthroughs in the understanding of the neurochemistry behind information-seeking behavior and the efficacy of grouping motor sequence learning actions in order to remember more than individual actions.