Attention and Cognitive Control in Humans, Animals and Intelligent Systems

rules In this experiment (Wallis, Anderson & Miller, 2001), illustrated in Figure 21, monkeys were trained to switch between two rules: Match and Non-match. Monkeys saw a sample picture followed by a delay and then a single test picture. For the match rule, the monkeys were given a reward if they released a lever when the pictures were the same, and held it if pictures were different. For the non-match rule, the rule was reversed. The trained monkeys could perform the task the first time they saw a new set of pictures. I.e.: The behavior did not depend on fixed stimulus-response associations, but on an “understanding” of the underlying rule. Figure 21. Layout of experiment to show how abstract rules can be formed in the pre frontal cortex of monkey brains. Picture adopted from (Miller, 2003). Stimuli