Transitive inference in a clinical childhood sample with a focus on autism spectrum disorder.

Transitive inference (TI) has a long history in the study of human development. There have, however, few pediatric studies that report clinical diagnoses have tested trial-and-error TI learning, in which participants infer item relations, rather than evaluate them explicitly from verbal descriptions. Children aged 8-10 underwent a battery of clinical assessments and received a range of diagnoses, potentially including autism spectrum disorder (ASD), attention-deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD), anxiety disorders (AD), specific learning disorders (SLD), and/or communication disorders (CD).

Intersubjectivity and the Emergence of Words.

Intersubjectivity refers to two non-verbal intersubjective relations infants experience during their first year that are precursors to the emergence of words. Trevarthen, a pioneer in the study of intersubjectivity, referred to those relations as primary and secondary intersubjectivity. The former, a dyadic coordination between the infant and her caregiver, begins at birth.

Influence of Rule- and Reward-based Strategies on Inferences of Serial Order by Monkeys.

Knowledge of transitive relationships between items can contribute to learning the order of a set of stimuli from pairwise comparisons. However, cognitive mechanisms of transitive inferences based on rank order remain unclear, as are relative contributions of reward associations and rule-based inference. To explore these issues, we created a conflict between rule- and reward-based learning during a serial ordering task.

Transitive inference after minimal training in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta).

Rhesus macaques, when trained for several hundred trials on adjacent items in an ordered list (e.g., A > B, B > C, C > D), are able to make accurate transitive inferences (TI) about previously untrained pairs (e.

Positional inference in rhesus macaques.

Understanding how organisms make transitive inferences is critical to understanding their general ability to learn serial relationships. In this context, transitive inference (TI) can be understood as a specific heuristic that applies broadly to many different serial learning tasks, which have been the focus of hundreds of studies involving dozens of species. In the present study, monkeys learned the order of 7-item lists of photographic stimuli by trial and error, and were then tested on "derived" lists.

Category learning in a transitive inference paradigm.

The implied order of a ranked set of visual images can be learned without reliance on information that explicitly signals their order. Such learning is difficult to explain by associative mechanisms, but can be accounted for by cognitive representations and processes such as transitive inference. Our study sought to determine if those processes also apply to learning categories of images.

Learned Representation of Implied Serial Order in Posterior Parietal Cortex.

Monkeys can learn the implied ranking of pairs of images drawn from an ordered set, despite never seeing all of the images simultaneously and without explicit spatial or temporal cues. We recorded the activity of posterior parietal cortex (including lateral intraparietal area LIP) neurons while monkeys learned 7-item transitive inference (TI) lists with 2 items presented on each trial. Behavior and neuronal activity were significantly influenced by the ordinal relationship of the stimulus pairs, specifically symbolic distance (the difference in rank) and joint rank (the sum of the ranks).

Reward associations do not explain transitive inference performance in monkeys.

Most accounts of behavior in nonhuman animals assume that they make choices to maximize expected reward value. However, model-free reinforcement learning based on reward associations cannot account for choice behavior in transitive inference paradigms. We manipulated the amount of reward associated with each item of an ordered list, so that maximizing expected reward value was always in conflict with decision rules based on the implicit list order.

Absolute and relative knowledge of ordinal position on implied lists.

Does serial learning result in specific associations between pairs of items, or does it result in a cognitive map based on relations of all items? In 2 experiments, we trained human participants to learn various lists of photographic images. We then tested the participants on new lists of photographic images. These new lists were constructed by selecting only 1 image from each list learned during training.

Discovering Implied Serial Order Through Model-Free and Model-Based Learning.

Humans and animals can learn to order a list of items without relying on explicit spatial or temporal cues. To do so, they appear to make use of transitivity, a property of all ordered sets. Here, we summarize relevant research on the transitive inference (TI) paradigm and its relationship to learning the underlying order of an arbitrary set of items.

Perceptual category learning of photographic and painterly stimuli in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) and humans.

Humans are highly adept at categorizing visual stimuli, but studies of human categorization are typically validated by verbal reports. This makes it difficult to perform comparative studies of categorization using non-human animals. Interpretation of comparative studies is further complicated by the possibility that animal performance may merely reflect reinforcement learning, whereby discrete features act as discriminative cues for categorization.

In the beginning: .

We review Berwick and Chomsky's a book premised on language as an instrument primarily of thought, only secondarily of communication. The authors conclude that a Universal Grammar can be reduced to three biologically isolated components, whose computational system for syntax was the result of a single mutation that occurred about 80,000 years ago. We question that argument because it ignores the origin of words, even though Berwick and Chomsky acknowledge that words evolved before grammar.

Inferential Learning of Serial Order of Perceptual Categories by Rhesus Monkeys ().

Category learning in animals is typically trained explicitly, in most instances by varying the exemplars of a single category in a matching-to-sample task. Here, we show that male rhesus macaques can learn categories by a transitive inference paradigm in which novel exemplars of five categories were presented throughout training. Instead of requiring decisions about a constant set of repetitively presented stimuli, we studied the macaque's ability to determine the relative order of multiple exemplars of particular stimuli that were rarely repeated.

Transitive inference in humans (Homo sapiens) and rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) after massed training of the last two list items.

Transitive inference (TI) is a classic learning paradigm for which the relative contributions of experienced rewards and representation-based inference have been debated vigorously, particularly regarding the notion that animals are capable of logic and reasoning. Rhesus macaque subjects and human participants performed a TI task in which, prior to learning a 7-item list (ABCDEFG), a block of trials presented exclusively the pair FG. Contrary to the expectation of associative models, the high prior rate of reward for F did not disrupt subsequent learning of the entire list.

Serial Cognition and Personality in Macaques.

We examined the associations between serial cognition and personality in rhesus macaques (). Nine macaques were tested on a simultaneous chaining task to assess their cognitive abilities. They were also rated for personality traits and scored according to a previously extracted six component structure derived from free-ranging rhesus macaques.

Implicit Value Updating Explains Transitive Inference Performance: The Betasort Model.

Transitive inference (the ability to infer that B > D given that B > C and C > D) is a widespread characteristic of serial learning, observed in dozens of species. Despite these robust behavioral effects, reinforcement learning models reliant on reward prediction error or associative strength routinely fail to perform these inferences. We propose an algorithm called betasort, inspired by cognitive processes, which performs transitive inference at low computational cost.

Eye movements reveal planning in humans: A comparison with Scarf and Colombo's (2009) monkeys.

On sequential response tasks, a long pause preceding the first response is thought to reflect participants taking time to plan a sequence of responses. By tracking the eye movements of two monkeys (Macaca fascicularis), Scarf and Colombo (2009, Eye Movements During List Execution Reveal No Planning in Monkeys [Macaca fascicularis], Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, Vol. 35, pp.

Rapid cognitive flexibility of rhesus macaques performing psychophysical task-switching.

Three rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) performed a simultaneous chaining task in which stimuli had to be sorted according to their visual properties. Each stimulus could vary independently along two dimensions (luminosity and radius), and a cue indicating which dimension to sort by was random trial to trial. These rapid and unpredictable changes constitute a task-switching paradigm, in which subjects must encode task demands and shift to whichever task-set is presently activated.

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

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.

Retrospective and prospective metacognitive judgments in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta).

A growing body of research suggests that some non-human animals are capable of making accurate metacognitive judgments. In previous studies, non-human animals have made either retrospective or prospective judgments (about how they did on a test or how they will do on a test, respectively). These two types of judgments are dissociable in humans.

Monkeys would rather see and do: preference for agentic control in rhesus macaques.

Rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) engaged in a series of computerized tasks modeled on billiards and arcade games in order to determine their degree of preference for scenarios in which food rewards were contingent on their actions, as opposed to those in which outcomes appeared externally caused. Throughout these tasks, subjects showed a consistent preference for "agentic control," a state in which goal-directed behavior is directly responsible for motivating outcomes. Other factors like the frequency and timing of reward deliveries were precisely controlled and did not explain observed preferences.

Disruption of component processes of spatial working memory by electroconvulsive shock but not magnetic seizure therapy.

Self-ordered spatial working memory measures provide important information regarding underlying cognitive strategies, such as stereotypy. This strategy is based on repetitive sequential selection of a spatial pattern once a correct sequence has been identified. We previously reported that electroconvulsive shock (ECS) but not magnetic seizure therapy (MST) impaired performance on a spatial working memory task in a preclinical model.

Mechanisms of inferential order judgments in humans (Homo sapiens) and rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta).

If A > B, and B > C, it follows logically that A > C. The process of reaching that conclusion is called transitive inference (TI). Several mechanisms have been offered to explain transitive performance.

Sequential planning in rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta).

In the current study, we examined the planning abilities of rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) by training them on a five-item list composed of coloured photographs and then testing them on switch and mask trials. In contrast to previous studies where monkeys made responses using a joystick, in the current study, monkeys made responses directly to a touch screen. On switch trials, after a response to the first list item, the on-screen positions of two list items were exchanged.

Defining the stimulus--a memoir.

The eminent psychophysicist, S.S. Stevens, once remarked that, "the basic problem of psychology was the definition of the stimulus" (Stevens, 1951, p.