Search results for "sensory cue"
showing 10 items of 62 documents
Rapid learning of a spatial memory task in a lacertid lizard (Podarcis liolepis).
2018
Abstract Mammals and birds are capable of navigating to a goal using learned map-like representations of space (i.e. place learning), but research assessing this navigational strategy in reptiles has produced inconclusive results, in part due to the use of procedures that do not take account of the peculiarities of reptilian behavior and physiology. Here I present a procedure suitable for testing spatial cognition that exploits a naturally evolved, ethologically relevant ability common to many lizards (i.e. refuge seeking behavior). The procedure requires lizards to learn the location of an open refuge inside a rectangular arena containing artificial refuges in every corner, using distal ex…
Social body odors
2013
Clef UT: 000324010400049; National audience
Evolution of anticipatory effects mediated by epigenetic changes.
2022
Abstract Anticipatory effects mediated by epigenetic changes occur when parents modify the phenotype of their offspring by making epigenetic changes in their gametes guided by information from an environmental cue. To investigate when do anticipatory effects mediated by epigenetic changes evolve in a fluctuating environment, I use an individual based simulation model with explicit genetic architecture. The model allows for the population to respond to environmental changes by evolving within generation plasticity, bet-hedging, or track the environment with genetic adaptation, in addition to the evolution of anticipatory effects. The results show that anticipatory effects evolve when the env…
Visual learning in Drosophila: Application on a roving robot and comparisons
2011
Visual learning is an important aspect of fly life. Flies are able to extract visual cues from objects, like colors, vertical and horizontal distributedness, and others, that can be used for learning to associate a meaning to specific features (i.e. a reward or a punishment). Interesting biological experiments show trained stationary flying flies avoiding flying towards specific visual objects, appearing on the surrounding environment. Wild-type flies effectively learn to avoid those objects but this is not the case for the learning mutant rutabaga defective in the cyclic AMP dependent pathway for plasticity. A bio-inspired architecture has been proposed to model the fly behavior and experi…
Ageing via sexual perception is a by-product of male adaptive plasticity inDrosophila melanogaster
2021
ABSTRACTSensory perception of environmental cues can dramatically modulate ageing across distant taxa. For example, maleDrosophila melanogasterage faster if they perceive female cues but fail to mate (ageing via sexual perception). This finding has been a breakthrough for our understanding of the mechanisms of ageing, yet we ignore how and why such responses have evolved. Here, we usedD. melanogasterto ask whether ageing via sexual perception may be a by-product of plastic adaptive responses to female cues, and found that while long-term sexual perception leads to reproductive costs, short-term perception increases male lifetime reproductive success in a competitive environment. Simulations…
Interaction of sight and sound in the perception and experience of musical performance
2016
Recently, Vuoskoski, Thompson, Clarke, and Spence (2014) demonstrated that visual kinematic performance cues may be more important than auditory performance cues in terms of observers’ ratings of expressivity perceived in audiovisual excerpts of piano playing, and that visual kinematic performance cues had crossmodal effects on the perception of auditory expressivity. The present study was designed to extend these findings, and to provide additional information about the roles of sight and sound in the perception and experience of musical performance. Experiment 1 investigated the relative contributions of auditory and visual kinematic performance features to participants’ subjective emotio…
Visual and postural eye-height information is flexibly coupled in the perception of virtual environments.
2021
We conducted two experiments to investigate how observers integrate postural and visual eye-height information when estimating the layout of interior space. In Experiment 1, we varied postural and visual eye-height information independently of each other in a virtual-reality setup. Observers estimated the width, depth, and height of simulated rooms. All dimensions were perceived as larger when the virtual visual eye-height corresponded to sitting on the floor as compared with standing upright. In contrast, the estimates remained widely unaffected by the observer's physical posture (likewise sitting vs. standing). In Experiment 2, we studied effects of the viewing condition (real vs. virtual…
The Louder, the Longer: Object Length Perception Is Influenced by Loudness, but Not by Pitch
2019
Sound by itself can be a reliable source of information about an object&rsquo
Visual cues improve students’ understanding of divergence and curl: Evidence from eye movements during reading and problem solving
2019
The coordination of multiple external representations is important for learning, but yet a difficult task for students, requiring instructional support. The subject in this study covers a typical relation in physics between abstract mathematical equations (definitions of divergence and curl) and a visual representation (vector field plot). To support the connection across both representations, two instructions with written explanations, equations, and visual representations (differing only in the presence of visual cues) were designed and their impact on students’ performance was tested. We captured students’ eye movements while they processed the written instruction and solved subsequent c…
Seeing Gravity: Gait Adaptations to Visual and Physical Inclines – A Virtual Reality Study
2020
Using advanced virtual reality technology, we demonstrate that exposure to virtual inclinations visually simulating inclined walking induces gait modulations in a manner consistent with expected gravitational forces (i.e., acting upon a free body), suggesting vision-based perception of gravity. The force of gravity critically impacts the regulation of our movements. However, how humans perceive and incorporate gravity into locomotion is not well understood. In this study, we introduce a novel paradigm for exposing humans to incongruent sensory information under conditions constrained by distinct gravitational effects, facilitating analysis of the consistency of human locomotion with expecte…