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Early ontogenesis of time percepction
Dörflová, Kateřina ; Nekovářová, Tereza (advisor) ; Nikolai, Tomáš (referee)
This work focuses on the topic of time perception, particular emphasis is placed on interval timing. Significant part of this work is oriented toward early ontogenesis of time perception, specifically toward human perception of time from the developmental perspective. Fundamental approaches relevant for current research in the field of time perception are represented in this work, especially from the psychological perspective. The work presents comprehensive view on the current state of knowledge concerning mechanisms of time perception and its function. Emphasis is placed on existing research of interval timing and related variables playing essential role in timing. Current knowledge in the field of the development of time perception is compared with the concept of time perception and its development in context of Jean Piaget's popular theory of cognitive development. KEYWORDS Time, time perception, interval timing, human ontogenesis
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Face recognition and emotional expression processing in primates
Englerová, Kateřina ; Nekovářová, Tereza (advisor) ; Fajnerová, Iveta (referee)
Visual modality is one of the most important senses for primates and also for many other an-imals. It allows them to perceive stimuli from their environment - important objects and places, and also conspecifics or individuals of other species. One of the crucial cognitive skills, especially for social animals, is the ability to distinguish between individuals and their emotions due to different facial features and expressions.Aim of this work is to summarize the current knowledge about face and emotion recognition. It includes neurological mechanisms, experimental methodologies and comparison between species.
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Forced swimming test and mechanisms of depression
Janďourková, Pavla ; Nekovářová, Tereza (advisor) ; Vodička, Martin (referee)
Depression is a severe psychical disorder belonging to affective disorders. Nowadays, it belongs to the most common psychical disorders and prevalence is between 5 % to 16 %. An animal research is essential to study mechanisms of depression. One of the models of the depression uses a forced swimming test in the animal research. Even though this test does not claim to model depression in all complexity, it has very predictive validity and mostly it is used to assess effects of antidepressant (on the basis of observation of changes in the behaviour of the experimental animals). The aim of this thesis is to review the neural mechanisms of depression and to compare them with mechanism which can be applied in the forced swimming test and affected by the antidepressants. Key words: forced swimming test, depression, neurotransmitters, antidepressants, hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis
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Ontogenesis of episodic memory in preschool children
Píšová, Martina ; Nekovářová, Tereza (advisor) ; Petrásek, Tomáš (referee)
Episodic memory enables us to remember and recall life events from the past. Episodic memory is a specific type of long-term declarative memory, which undergoes changes in ontogeny. To examinate of episodic memory, "episodic-like memory model", was developed. This model focuses on three basic components of episodic memory: "What happened", "Where did it happen" and "When did it happen". The aim of this diploma thesis is to develop and to validate of particular tests of episodic memory with consideration for their feasibility for preschool children. In order to study episodic memory we used an "episodic-like memory model" and experiments which focused on: children's verbal ability, differentiation of two perspectives during remembering of events and timing memories on an autobiographical axis. We aimed to inspect the effect of age on performance in these tests, possible links between performance in these experiments and the effect of level and the three components of episodic memory on number of errors made. In our dataset we found a significant effect of the age of children in Sentence repetition test and in test of Object collection in the virtual house, in the same test we found a effect of the level on number of errors. We also found a significant correlation between correct responses in verbal...
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Test of object permanence in primates
Gálik, Michal ; Nekovářová, Tereza (advisor) ; Špinka, Marek (referee)
5 ABSTRACT Object permanence is a cognitive ability to perceive the continuous existence of objects, even if they cannot be directly observed, respectively perceived by other senses (Piaget 1954). In humans object permanence develops in 6 qualitatively different stages. By using a comparative approach, it was found that the last stage 6 of this ability also occurs in great apes, gibbons and some New World monkeys (capuchin, marmoset and tamarin). In this study, we conducted a study with a series of invisible displacements of an object, in which we investigated whether two rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) have fully developed the ability of object permanence and don't rely on simple alternative cognitive strategies, while solving the different tasks. With one test subject, we confirmed that he solved the tasks with stage 6 object permanence abilities. Although the second individual reached significant performance in some sessions, the overall results are ambiguous, because during the testing he had a tendency to use simple alternative strategies. Our study concludes that under certain circumstances macaques have the cognitive capacity for a fully developed ability of object permanence. Key words: Object permanence, rhesus macaque, invisible displacement, cognitive functions
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Relative numerosity discrimination in primates
Moravcová, Anna ; Nekovářová, Tereza (advisor) ; Petrásek, Tomáš (referee)
This work is focused on numerical competence in primates specifically focusing on relative numerosity, one of the many aspects of these cognitive abilities. Relative numerosity is an ability to discriminate a larger quantity from a smaller amount or smaller quantity from a larger amount and could be classified as one of the easiest numerical competence. In this work I have summarized the present knowledge of numerical competences in primates, which have been so far studied only in a few species of primates, most of them was rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) and chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes). In the experimental part I focused on the research of relative numerosity in rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta). The goal of my work was to find out whether macaques are able to solve the problem of relative abundance with different types of stimuli. Another goal was to find out whether they are able to generalize information about relative abundance and whether they can apply it for new design of the task. The results confirm that macaques possess the ability of relative numerosity and are able to abstract stimuli that are differing in their character. This proves that they are not learning to recognize a particular stimul, but are able to use this numerical skill on any type of stimul. I also found out that...
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