(Press-News.org) From birth, animals can use their spontaneous preferences (predispositions that are not learned) to decide which stimuli to attend and approach. Previous research has shown how infants and newborn chicks, with no previous experience with animals, are spontaneously attracted by the movement of living organisms. These new findings demonstrate how the movement against gravity can be particularly good in attracting our attention, since only living beings can consistently move upward against gravity. This research is an important contribution to our understanding of inner cognitive models of behaviour and activity in early stages of life.
Dr Elisabetta Versace, Royal Society Leverhulme Trust Senior Fellow and Senior Lecturer at Queen Mary said: “We find people and other animals extremely attractive objects to pay attention to, as soon as we see the walking of a dog, or the climbing of a lizard, our attention is all on them.
“It has been found that even infants and newborn chicks, with no previous experience with animals, are spontaneously attracted by the movement of living organisms: we showed how a very simple cue such as movement upward is able to trigger our attention”
The research set out to test whether upward movement against gravity is attractive at birth before any previous visual experience in the world.
The researchers tested the spontaneous preferences of newly hatched chicks, at their first experience with visual stimuli, using artificial intelligence to automatically track the movement of animals. They used similar stimuli to those used to test human expectations on gravity in the Ferrè laboratory.
They found that when given a choice between a circle moving upward or downward on computer screens, newly hatched chicks spontaneously approached upward moving stimuli. Prior to these experiments, it was thought that the configuration of multiple "joints" of a moving animal triggered attention to living beings. The experimental findings showed that a single moving dot can give the interesting feature of a living object.
The findings demonstrate the predisposed knowledge that vertebrate animals are born with, and that can be used to test for spontaneous abilities that are already available at birth. This is a crucial step to understand how sensitivity to simple, low-level features can help shape our activities from the initial stages of life. This is also important to understand the inner cognitive models that guide our behaviour on the Earth, under terrestrial gravity, and in non-terrestrial gravity.
Watch a YouTube Video to learn more
ENDS
Research paper: Bliss, Larry; Vasas, Vera; Freeland, Laura; Roach, Robyn; Ferrè, Elisa Raffaella; Versace, Elisabetta (2023): “A spontaneous gravity prior: newborn chicks prefer stimuli that move against gravity". Biology Letters, The Royal Society.
END
Newborn chicks are attracted to objects that move upwards
2023-03-08
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Hunter-gatherer childhoods may offer clues to improving education and wellbeing in developed countries, Cambridge study argues
2023-03-08
The benefits of skin-to-skin contact for both parents and infants are already recognised, but other behaviours common in hunter-gatherer societies may also benefit families in economically developed countries
Parents and children may benefit from a larger network of people being involved in care-giving, as seen in hunter-gatherer societies
Increasing staff-to-child ratios in nurseries to bring them closer to highly attentive hunter-gatherer ratios could support learning and wellbeing
More peer-to-peer, ...
Revolutionary new bone cancer drug could save children’s lives
2023-03-08
Peer reviewed – experimental study – human cells and mice
Researchers at the University of East Anglia have developed a new drug that works against all of the main types of primary bone cancer.
Cancer that starts in the bones, rather than cancer that has spread to the bones, predominantly affects children.
Current treatment is gruelling, with outdated chemotherapy cocktails and limb amputation.
Despite all of this, the five-year survival rate is poor at just 42 per cent – largely because of how rapidly bone cancer spreads to the lungs.
But a new study published today shows how a new drug called ‘CADD522’ blocks ...
Clogged leg arteries underdiagnosed and undertreated in women
2023-03-08
Sophia Antipolis, 8 March 2023: Treatments for peripheral artery disease (PAD) were largely developed in men and are less effective in women, according to a review published today in European Heart Journal – Quality of Care and Clinical Outcomes, a journal of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).1 The paper highlights the biological, clinical and societal reasons why the condition may be missed in women, who respond less well to treatment and have worse clinical outcomes.
“Greater understanding is needed about why we are failing to address the health outcome gap between genders,” said author Mary Kavurma, an associate professor at the Heart Research Institute, ...
Poor sleep linked to years of poor cardiovascular health
2023-03-08
Poor sleep could lead to between two and seven years worth of heightened heart disease risk and even premature death, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of Sydney in collaboration with Southern Denmark University.
The study analysed data from over 300,000 middle-aged adults from the UK Biobank and found that different disturbances to sleep are associated with different durations of compromised cardiovascular health later in life compared to healthy sleepers.
In particular, men with clinical ...
Gender targets miss the mark for women in leadership
2023-03-08
Gender diversity experts at the University of South Australia are urging governments to rethink their approach to gender targets as new research shows that they do not lead to expected improvements in gender equity for women in leadership.
Examining the effects of gender targets in the Australian public service, researchers found that when gender targets were imposed, they didn’t always achieve their intended outcomes.
In Australia, women make up only 19 per cent of CEOs, and less than a third of key management positions (32 per cent). In the Australian public sector, women represent 60 per cent of the workforce, yet ...
CHOP researchers find rate of fatal opioid poisonings among children more than doubled over 13-year span
2023-03-08
Philadelphia, March 8, 2023 – Researchers from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) found opioids were responsible for more than half of all fatal poisonings in children ages 5 and younger, more than double the proportion of fatal poisonings caused by opioids in 2005. Additionally, over-the-counter drugs still contribute to fatal poisonings in this age group despite increased regulation. The findings, published today in the journal Pediatrics, underscore the need for improved intervention to prevent further fatal poisonings.
More than half of all reported poisonings affect children ages 5 and younger and have the ...
Bumblebees learn new “trends” in their behavior by watching and learning
2023-03-07
A new study has shown that bumblebees pick up new “trends” in their behaviour by watching and learning from other bees, and that one form of a behaviour can spread rapidly through a colony even when a different version gets discovered.
The research, led by Queen Mary University of London and published in PLOS Biology, provides strong evidence that social learning drives the spread of bumblebee behaviour – in this case, precisely how they forage for food.
A variety of experiments were set up to establish this. The researchers designed a two-option puzzle box that could be opened either by pushing a red tab ...
UMass Chan investigators identify new pattern recognition system that monitors disease-causing bacteria in C. elegans
2023-03-07
A study published in Immunity by physician-scientist Read Pukkila-Worley, MD, and MD/PhD students Nicholas D. Peterson and Samantha Y. Tse describes a new manner of detecting microbial infection that intercepts pathogen-derived signals of growth to assess the relative threat of virulent bacteria. A nuclear hormone receptor in the nematode C. elegans senses a toxic metabolite produced by the bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa to activate innate immunity. These data reveal an ancient strategy that informs the origins ...
Blood test identifies acute myeloid leukemia patients at greater risk for relapse after bone marrow transplant
2023-03-07
Blood test identifies acute myeloid leukemia patients at greater risk for relapse after bone marrow transplant
A small portion of adults in remission from a deadly blood cancer had persisting mutations that were detected, which predicted their risk of death from having the cancer return
Researchers at the National Institutes of Health show the benefits of screening adult patients in remission from acute myeloid leukemia (AML) for residual disease before receiving a bone marrow transplant. The findings, published in JAMA, support ongoing research aimed ...
Whistleblowers losing faith in media impact
2023-03-07
The whistleblowers who once trusted journalism are losing faith in the institution.
A new study from the University of Georgia found that many whistleblowers who reached out to journalists in the past no longer believe media has the same ability to motivate change, and they feel let down by a system they once trusted.
“If you don’t believe that an outlet or journalist can carry you across the finish line—meaning can affect change, attract enough attention and attract the attention of the right people—then you’re losing faith,” said Karin Assmann, study lead and assistant professor in UGA’s Grady College of Journalism ...