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

Learning

[phoenixwade]

So If we get an infinite number of Humans, and have them type on an infinite number of Typewriters, We'll still have a season of crap on TV.......

Re:Learning

[Tatarize]

Actually you'd have an infinite amount of mass, and thus a black hole after a few moments. Which would leave you with pretty much nothing, and it would destroy all information... my goodness! YOU WOULD HAVE SLASHDOT!

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?

[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.

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.

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.

The important thing is that

[igny]

No monkeys are left behind.

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.

Monkey see, monkey do?

[fahrbot-bot]

monkeys, like humans, learn faster by being actively involved

Father Monkey: Son. That poo won't throw itself...