Sensitivity to geometric shape regularity in humans and baboons: A putative signature of human singularity
Sensitivity to geometric shape regularity in humans and baboons: A putative signature of human singularity
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DOI：
10.1073/pnas.2023123118
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发表时间：
2021-04
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影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Mathias Sablé-Meyer;J. Fagot;Serge Caparos;Timo van Kerkoerle;Marie Amalric;S. Dehaene
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文献类型：
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作者：
Mathias Sablé-Meyer;J. Fagot;Serge Caparos;Timo van Kerkoerle;Marie Amalric;S. Dehaene
确定人类和非人类灵长类动物之间的认知差异是认知神经科学的中心目标。我们表明，几何的直觉存在于人类，但在狒狒缺席。在一个简单的入侵者任务中，受试者必须找出六种几何形状中的哪一种是不同的，这揭示了几何规则性在所有人类群体中的影响，无论年龄、教育和文化如何，但这种影响在狒狒中并不存在。用于物体识别的腹侧视觉通路模型可以预测狒狒的表现，但需要一个符号模型来解释人类的表现。我们的研究结果强调了人类符号抽象的倾向，即使在一个基本的形状感知任务，并提供了一个挑战，人类形状感知的神经网络模型。在灵长类动物中，人类在创造和操纵高度复杂的语言、数学和音乐结构方面的能力是特别的。在这里，我们表明，这种对抽象结构的敏感性已经存在于一个更简单的领域：规则的几何形状，如正方形，矩形和平行四边形的视觉感知。我们要求人类受试者在六个四边形中检测入侵者的形状。虽然入侵者总是由一个顶点的相同位移量来定义，但结果显示了几何规律性效应：当基础形状或入侵者是一个包含直角、平行或对称的规则图形时，而不是一个更不规则的形状时，检测要容易得多。这种效应在几项任务中得到了复制，在所有受试人群中也得到了复制，包括未受过教育的辛巴族成年人和法国移民。然而，狒狒没有表现出这种几何规律性的效果，即使经过广泛的训练。狒狒的行为被卷积神经网络（CNN）捕获，但CNN和变分自动编码器都没有捕获人类的几何规律性效应。然而，一个符号模型，基于欧几里德几何的精确性质，非常符合人类的行为。我们的研究结果表明，人类的倾向，象征性的抽象渗透甚至基本的形状知觉。他们提出了一个假定的签名人类奇点，并提供了一个挑战，人类形状感知的非符号模型。
Significance Determining the cognitive differences between human and nonhuman primates is a central goal of cognitive neuroscience. We show that intuitions of geometry are present in humans but absent in baboons. A simple intruder task in which subjects must find which of six geometric shapes is different reveals an effect of geometric regularity in all human groups regardless of age, education, and culture, yet this effect is absent in baboons. Models of the ventral visual pathway for object recognition predict baboons’ performance, but a symbolic model is needed to account for human performance. Our results underline the human propensity for symbolic abstraction, even in an elementary shape perception task, and provide a challenge for neural network models of human shape perception. Among primates, humans are special in their ability to create and manipulate highly elaborate structures of language, mathematics, and music. Here we show that this sensitivity to abstract structure is already present in a much simpler domain: the visual perception of regular geometric shapes such as squares, rectangles, and parallelograms. We asked human subjects to detect an intruder shape among six quadrilaterals. Although the intruder was always defined by an identical amount of displacement of a single vertex, the results revealed a geometric regularity effect: detection was considerably easier when either the base shape or the intruder was a regular figure comprising right angles, parallelism, or symmetry rather than a more irregular shape. This effect was replicated in several tasks and in all human populations tested, including uneducated Himba adults and French kindergartners. Baboons, however, showed no such geometric regularity effect, even after extensive training. Baboon behavior was captured by convolutional neural networks (CNNs), but neither CNNs nor a variational autoencoder captured the human geometric regularity effect. However, a symbolic model, based on exact properties of Euclidean geometry, closely fitted human behavior. Our results indicate that the human propensity for symbolic abstraction permeates even elementary shape perception. They suggest a putative signature of human singularity and provide a challenge for nonsymbolic models of human shape perception.