Abstract
During a visual search performance by a chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes), horizontal location (column) of target was sequentially changed across 48-trial blocks. Reaction time was used for measure of facilitatory and inhibitory effects of the blocked-trial fixation on her search performance. The chimpanzee showed significant decrease of response time in the later phase of each block in comparison with the condition in which the target location was changed to another column than before changing. Furthermore, difference in response time before and after changing column monotonically and linearly increased as a function of distance between columns. In summary, the blocked-trial fixation of the target location facilitated the chimpanzee's visual-search performance, and that when the pretrial information became invalid, her performance was clearly disrupted. Pretrial information about target location could “prime” and modify the chimpanzee's search strategy.
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Tomonaga, M. Facilitatory and inhibitory effects of blocked-trial fixation of the target location on a chimpanzee's (Pan troglodytes) visual search performance. Primates 34, 161–168 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02381387
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02381387