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Animate monitoring is not uniform: implications for the animate monitoring hypothesis
The animate monitoring hypothesis (AMH) purports that humans evolved specialized mechanisms that prioritize attention to animates over inanimates. Importantly, the hypothesis emphasizes that any animate—an entity that can move on its own—should take priority in attention. While many experiments have...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2023
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10174449/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37179895 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1146248 |
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author | Loucks, Jeff Reise, Berit Gahite, Rosselle Fleming, Shaun |
author_facet | Loucks, Jeff Reise, Berit Gahite, Rosselle Fleming, Shaun |
author_sort | Loucks, Jeff |
collection | PubMed |
description | The animate monitoring hypothesis (AMH) purports that humans evolved specialized mechanisms that prioritize attention to animates over inanimates. Importantly, the hypothesis emphasizes that any animate—an entity that can move on its own—should take priority in attention. While many experiments have found general support for this hypothesis, there have yet been no systematic investigations into whether the type of animate matters for animate monitoring. In the present research we addressed this issue across three experiments. In Experiment 1, participants (N = 53) searched for an animate or inanimate entity in a search task, and the animate was either a mammal or a non-mammal (e.g., bird, reptile, insect). Mammals were found significantly faster than inanimates, replicating the basic AMH finding. However, they were also found significantly faster than non-mammals, who were not found faster than inanimates. Two additional experiments were conducted to probe for differences among types of non-mammals using an inattentional blindness task. Experiment 2 (N = 171) compared detection of mammals, insects, and inanimates, and Experiment 3 (N = 174) compared birds and herpetofauna (reptiles and amphibians). In Experiment 2, mammals were spontaneously detected at significantly higher rates than insects, who were detected at only slightly higher rates than the inanimates. Furthermore, when participants did not consciously identify the target, they nonetheless could correctly guess the higher level category of the target (living vs. nonliving thing) for the mammals and the inanimates, but could not do so for the insects. We also found in Experiment 3 that reptiles and birds were spontaneously detected at rates similar to the mammals, but like insects they were not identified as living things at rates greater than chance when they were not consciously detected. These results do not support a strong claim that all animates are prioritized in attention, but they do call for a more nuanced view. As such, they open a new window into the nature of animate monitoring, which have implications for theories of its origin. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10174449 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-101744492023-05-12 Animate monitoring is not uniform: implications for the animate monitoring hypothesis Loucks, Jeff Reise, Berit Gahite, Rosselle Fleming, Shaun Front Psychol Psychology The animate monitoring hypothesis (AMH) purports that humans evolved specialized mechanisms that prioritize attention to animates over inanimates. Importantly, the hypothesis emphasizes that any animate—an entity that can move on its own—should take priority in attention. While many experiments have found general support for this hypothesis, there have yet been no systematic investigations into whether the type of animate matters for animate monitoring. In the present research we addressed this issue across three experiments. In Experiment 1, participants (N = 53) searched for an animate or inanimate entity in a search task, and the animate was either a mammal or a non-mammal (e.g., bird, reptile, insect). Mammals were found significantly faster than inanimates, replicating the basic AMH finding. However, they were also found significantly faster than non-mammals, who were not found faster than inanimates. Two additional experiments were conducted to probe for differences among types of non-mammals using an inattentional blindness task. Experiment 2 (N = 171) compared detection of mammals, insects, and inanimates, and Experiment 3 (N = 174) compared birds and herpetofauna (reptiles and amphibians). In Experiment 2, mammals were spontaneously detected at significantly higher rates than insects, who were detected at only slightly higher rates than the inanimates. Furthermore, when participants did not consciously identify the target, they nonetheless could correctly guess the higher level category of the target (living vs. nonliving thing) for the mammals and the inanimates, but could not do so for the insects. We also found in Experiment 3 that reptiles and birds were spontaneously detected at rates similar to the mammals, but like insects they were not identified as living things at rates greater than chance when they were not consciously detected. These results do not support a strong claim that all animates are prioritized in attention, but they do call for a more nuanced view. As such, they open a new window into the nature of animate monitoring, which have implications for theories of its origin. Frontiers Media S.A. 2023-04-27 /pmc/articles/PMC10174449/ /pubmed/37179895 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1146248 Text en Copyright © 2023 Loucks, Reise, Gahite and Fleming. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Psychology Loucks, Jeff Reise, Berit Gahite, Rosselle Fleming, Shaun Animate monitoring is not uniform: implications for the animate monitoring hypothesis |
title | Animate monitoring is not uniform: implications for the animate monitoring hypothesis |
title_full | Animate monitoring is not uniform: implications for the animate monitoring hypothesis |
title_fullStr | Animate monitoring is not uniform: implications for the animate monitoring hypothesis |
title_full_unstemmed | Animate monitoring is not uniform: implications for the animate monitoring hypothesis |
title_short | Animate monitoring is not uniform: implications for the animate monitoring hypothesis |
title_sort | animate monitoring is not uniform: implications for the animate monitoring hypothesis |
topic | Psychology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10174449/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37179895 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1146248 |
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