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

we needed more research on this?

[brre]

This has been well established for decades across a wide variety of species. The result is entirely unsurprising. The only way this would have been newsworthy would be if the result had been the exact opposite.

Sample size of 2?

[1729]

Even if the rest of the methodology is sound (and based on the description in TFA, I'm skeptical), an experiment two subjects is not sufficient for their conclusions. With only two subjects, any conclusion is suspect.

Re:Sample size of 2?

[machinelou]

The notion that "the number of subjects" has any bearing on the quality of an experiment or the degree to which the results can be trusted is somewhat off the mark. The better metric is the number of times the effect has been demonstrated. Effects can be demonstrated both across and within subjects. However, the number of times an effect has been demonstrated becomes less important the more we (the scientific community) are familiar with the relevant baseline. You don't have to throw a brick through a window 1000 times (or even 10 times) to convince someone bricks can break windows (in this case, each window is analogous to each participant in an experiment).

However, the general notion that learning and behavioral processes span several species is well established. For example, The Matching Law is an equation that describes the choices organisms can make between two options and has been empirically demonstrated with several species and contexts including rats, pigeons, flocks of pigeons (it's called Ideal Free Distribution in this case), monkeys, children, and basketball player's choices between 2 and 3 points shots.

A better question might be...

[Bill Dog]

...what would you do if you held a flame war but no one came? Only 62 posts all day. Surely this featured on the front page was supposed to elicit hundreds of "evolution is fact", "no it isn't", "yes it is" back-and-forths. Predictably, a couple of commenters even dragged Dubya and Republicans into the "discussion", and still no sparks. As unlikely as it may have seemed, I think even the masses of dullards here might be starting to catch on to what's going on, that they're being played. If we just stop taking the bait every time, maybe we'll start getting a more interesting selection of stories.