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Do animals see the world the way we do?
We can't ask them, so scientists have devised an experiment.

- Humans have the capacity for conscious awareness of our visual world.
- While all sighted animals respond to visual stimuli, we don't know if any of them consciously take note of what they're seeing in the way that we do.
- Researchers from Yale have devised experiments that suggest that rhesus monkeys share this ability.
All day long, our brains are busy receiving sensory information: smells, sounds, sights, and so on. We absorb much of this without really thinking about it. However, every now and then something we see grabs our attention, maybe a stunning landscape or a beautiful sunset. We stop what we're doing and spend a moment taking it in. Are we the only animal that can stop and take conscious notice of what we see?
A study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that we're not. It appears that at least one other animal — the rhesus monkey, Macaca mulatta — shares our ability to pay deliberate attention to what it sees. The authors of the study infer this ability, paradoxically, from the manner in which the monkey deals with visual inputs it doesn't consciously notice.
Double disassociation
Credit: Amanda Dalbjörn/Unsplash
It has been known for some time that even when visual stimuli escape our conscious attention, we respond to it subliminally, says Yale psychologist Laurie Santos, co-senior author of the paper along with Yale psychologist Steve Chang and Ran Hassin of Hebrew University. Even so, she says, "We tend to show different patterns of learning when presented with subliminal stimuli than we do for consciously experienced, or supraliminal stimuli." ("Supraliminal" describes visual stimuli that are consciously noted.)
The authors of the study set out to see if rhesus monkeys exhibited a similar "double disassociation" in the way they respond to supraliminal vs. subliminal visual stimuli.
Ask a monkey a question
Credit: Jamie Haughton/Unsplash
Obviously, research on animals is hampered by our inability to question critters. As a result, scientists need to be creative in designing experimental methods that allow them to draw conclusions based strictly on empirical observation.
"People have wondered for a long time whether animals experience the world the way we do, but it's been difficult to figure out a good way to test this question empirically," says first author of the study, Moshe Shay Ben-Haim, a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University.
The researchers came up with a series of experiments in which both humans and rhesus monkeys could observably demonstrate how they process subliminal and supraliminal visual stimuli.
In the experiments, participants were tasked with predicting the side of a computer screen on which a target image would appear depending on the position of a visual cue, a small star symbol, provided by the researchers.
When the researchers displayed the cue on one side of the screen long enough to ensure that it was noticed — that is, it was a supraliminal signal — both humans and monkeys learned to look for the target image on the opposite side of the screen.
On the other hand, when the star flashed on the screen only very briefly, both humans and monkeys consistently looked to the side on which this subliminal signal had appeared, anticipating the target image's appearance there.
In the first case, the subjects learned the significance of the cue's position. In the second, their response simply mirrored the subliminal cue. This, say the authors, demonstrates the different ways in which humans — and monkeys apparently — react to visual stimuli that are consciously noticed or not.
Ben-Haim summarizes the authors' interpretation of the experiment:
"These results show that at least one non-human animal exhibits both non-conscious perception as well as human-like conscious visual awareness. We now have a new non-verbal method for assessing whether other non-human creatures experience visual awareness in the same way as humans."
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What early US presidents looked like, according to AI-generated images
"Deepfakes" and "cheap fakes" are becoming strikingly convincing — even ones generated on freely available apps.
Abraham Lincoln, George Washington
- A writer named Magdalene Visaggio recently used FaceApp and Airbrush to generate convincing portraits of early U.S. presidents.
- "Deepfake" technology has improved drastically in recent years, and some countries are already experiencing how it can weaponized for political purposes.
- It's currently unknown whether it'll be possible to develop technology that can quickly and accurately determine whether a given video is real or fake.
The future of deepfakes
<p>In 2018, Gabon's president Ali Bongo had been out of the country for months receiving medical treatment. After Bongo hadn't been seen in public for months, rumors began swirling about his condition. Some suggested Bongo might even be dead. In response, Bongo's administration released a video that seemed to show the president addressing the nation.</p><p>But the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=324528215059254" target="_blank">video</a> is strange, appearing choppy and blurry in parts. After political opponents declared the video to be a deepfake, Gabon's military attempted an unsuccessful coup. What's striking about the story is that, to this day, experts in the field of deepfakes can't conclusively verify whether the video was real. </p><p>The uncertainty and confusion generated by deepfakes poses a "global problem," according to a <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/is-seeing-still-believing-the-deepfake-challenge-to-truth-in-politics/#cancel" target="_blank">2020 report from The Brookings Institution</a>. In 2018, the U.S. Department of Defense released some of the first tools able to successfully detect deepfake videos. The problem, however, is that deepfake technology keeps improving, meaning forensic approaches may forever be one step behind the most sophisticated forms of deepfakes. </p><p>As the 2020 report noted, even if the private sector or governments create technology to identify deepfakes, they will:</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"...operate more slowly than the generation of these fakes, allowing false representations to dominate the media landscape for days or even weeks. "A lie can go halfway around the world before the truth can get its shoes on," warns David Doermann, the director of the Artificial Intelligence Institute at the University of Buffalo. And if defensive methods yield results short of certainty, as many will, technology companies will be hesitant to label the likely misrepresentations as fakes."</p>The COVID-19 pandemic has introduced a number of new behaviours into daily routines, like physical distancing, mask-wearing and hand sanitizing. Meanwhile, many old behaviours such as attending events, eating out and seeing friends have been put on hold.
VR experiments manipulate how people feel about coffee
A new study looks at how images of coffee's origins affect the perception of its premiumness and quality.
Expert drinking coffee while wearing a VR headset.
- Images can affect how people perceive the quality of a product.
- In a new study, researchers show using virtual reality that images of farms positively influence the subjects' experience of coffee.
- The results provide insights on the psychology and power of marketing.
Is empathy always good?
Research has shown how important empathy is to relationships, but there are limits to its power.
