Monkeys and Humans Learn the Same Way

Lucas123 writes "A new study from UCLA showed that monkeys, like humans, learn faster by being actively involved in the learning process rather than just having information placed before them, according to a story in ScienceDaily. In the study, two rhesus macaque monkeys learned to put up to 18 photos on an ATM-like touch screen in a row. 'The monkeys did much better on the first three days when they had the help than when they didn't, but on the test day, it completely reversed. When they studied with the hint, there is no evidence they learned anything about the list. They learned the lists when they didn't get the help.'"

Comments

No...

[benhocking]

We are advanced primates. We are great apes, not monkeys. And, I'm not completely sure about the advanced part, either... ;)

Re:Sample size of 2?

[1729]

an experiment two subjects

Oops, that should be: "an experiment with two subjects

Re:Sample size of 2?

[venicebeach]

Not too unusual for a psych experiment with monkeys.

Rather than gather a large number of subjects, they repeated the experiment many times within each subject. The two monkeys (Macduff and Oberon) each studied 18-20 lists. On the fourth and final day of testing, recall for the lists for which they were given hints was close to 0%. For the lists where they were not given hints, recall was about 50% for one monkey and 70% for the other, a statistically significant effect within each subject.

The point is that the act of recalling the information is a powerfull learning event. Don't look at the other side of the flash card too quickly.

Original research abstract

[FleaPlus]

In the interest of elevating the level of discussion about this research (hah!), below is the original research article and abstract. The article itself probably needs an institutional subscription to access:

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j .1467-9280.2007.01959.x

The Generation Effect in Monkeys

Nate Kornell, Herbert S. Terrace

ABSTRACT--How well one retains new information depends on how actively it is processed during learning. Active attempts to retrieve information from memory result in more learning than passive observation of the same information (the generation effect). Here, we present evidence for the generation effect in monkeys. Subjects were trained to respond to five-item lists of photographs in a particular order. On some lists, they could request "hints" to guide their behavior; on others, they had to generate the correct order from memory. Training with hints resulted in high levels of initial performance, but accuracy dropped precipitously when the hints were removed on the criterion test. Training without hints led to relatively poor initial performance, but accuracy increased steadily and remained high on the criterion test.

Recent Orangutan Research

[billstewart]

Recent Orangutan Article - Among the great apes, orangutans are probably the least like humans (as opposed to bonobos, who are even closer than the common chimp.) But they do have some similar communication patterns - some of the recent research talks about them using charades as a way to convey ideas, though they usually don't get quite as far as "third syllable sounds like ____". The researchers commented that if Orangs can do that, probably the more human-like great apes can too.

We and our fellow apes are related to the other primates; Wikipedia says that there's some disagreement over whether primates are descended from Plesiadapiformes or just related do them.