Comparative Vision and Attention

许多研究人员研究非人类动物是如何看待世界的。然而，考虑到动物学习和反应能力的局限性，到目前为止，只有某些类型的比较研究是可能的。在国家科学基金会的资助下，哈佛大学和布兰迪斯大学的Nakayama博士和Pepperberg博士将解决有关灰鹦鹉视觉处理的问题。利用灰鹦鹉模仿人类语音的能力，佩珀伯格能够训练一只灰鹦鹉对简单的视觉错觉做出口头反应(例如，米勒-莱尔错觉，其中两条线在人类看来长度不同，但实际上并非如此)。鹦鹉？S的回答表明，它也察觉到了错觉。Nakayama博士和Pepperberg博士将训练更多的鸟类学习使用英语语音来标记各种颜色和形状。目前的项目将研究鹦鹉是否像人一样，能够(A)完成一个部分被覆盖的物体的形状(例如，看到一个被圆圈部分遮挡的正方形仍然是一个正方形)，以及(B)“看到”实际不在那里的物体，比如(在人类和灵长类动物看来)三个类似吃豆人的部分圆圈之间似乎出现了一个三角形，这些圆圈以三角形的方式排列，正式地被称为“虚幻轮廓”或“Kanizsa图形”。例如，人们可能会认为鹦鹉能够推断出不能完全观察到的捕食者的存在，但还没有人能够直接问任何非人类的这样的问题。未来的研究将涉及更复杂的任务，旨在研究鸟类如何注意视觉环境中的物体。这项研究的潜在长期目标是确定这些任务是否揭示了鸟类和人类在感知处理方面的差异。成功训练鹦鹉将使Nakayama博士和Pepperberg博士最终能够检查广泛的视觉任务，以确定哪些感知能力与鸟类和人类具有相同的潜在机制，哪些不同。将这两个大脑大小非常不同的物种进行比较，可以让我们了解哪些感知组件可以用较小规模的神经体系结构来实现，哪些需要更大的大脑大小和/或复杂性。这些数据将指导未来与其他物种的比较，并为人类大脑的结构和功能提供见解，并可能为人工视觉处理器的设计提供有用的见解。

Many researchers study how nonhuman animals see the world. To date, however, only certain types of comparative studies have been possible, given the limitations of animal learning and response capabilities. With funding from the National Science Foundation, Drs. Nakayama and Pepperberg at Harvard and Brandeis Universities will address questions about visual processing in Grey parrots. Taking advantage of Grey parrots' ability to mimic human speech, Pepperberg was able to train a Grey parrot to verbally respond to simple optical illusions (e.g., the Müller-Lyer illusion, in which two lines appear to humans to vary in length but in reality do not). The parrot?s responses indicated that it also perceived the illusions. Drs. Nakayama and Pepperberg will train additional birds to learn to label various colors and shapes using the sounds of English speech. The current project will then examine whether parrots, like people, can (a) complete the shape of a partially covered object (e.g., see a square partially occluded by a circle as still being a square), and (b) "see" objects that aren't actually there, like a triangle that seems to appear (to humans and primates) between three pac-man-like partial circles that are arranged in a triangular manner, something formally known as an "illusory contour" or "Kanizsa figure." One might expect a parrot to be able, for example, to infer the presence of a predator that isn't fully observable, but no one has been able to ask any nonhuman such questions directly. Future research will involve more complex tasks designed to study how birds pay attention to objects in their visual environment. The underlying long-term goal of this research is to determine whether the tasks reveal differences in perceptual processing between birds and humans. Success in training the parrots will enable Drs. Nakayama and Pepperberg eventually to examine a broad range of visual tasks to determine which perceptual abilities share the same underlying mechanisms in birds and humans and which do not. Comparisons between these two species with very different brain sizes will allow us to understand which components of perception can be implemented with smaller scale neural architecture and which require greater brain size and/or complexity. The data will guide future comparisons with other species and provide insights into the structure and function of the human brain and may provide useful insights for the design of artificial visual processors.