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Chimps Outscore College Students on Memory Test

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the well-when-the-rewards-are-bananas dept.

AP's Malcolm Ritter reports that young chimpanzees were better at remembering a series of numbers flashed on a screen, than the Japanese college students used as a control group. Scientists plan to repeat the experiment using 5th graders against the great apes.

5 of 271 comments (clear)

  1. Misleading... by pwnies · · Score: 5, Interesting
    FTA:

    Results showed that the chimps, while no more accurate than the people, could do this faster. Seems to me that the headline is slightly misleading. It's not that the chimps could do better on the memory tests, they could just do it faster - at least for the 8/10ths of a second test. Later the article shows that the chimps could perform the same when the screen flashed for only 2/10ths of a second. This doesn't necessarily mean that they have a better memory, as this could be attributed to peripheral vision as well.
  2. Not a comparison of cognitive ability by SparkleMotion88 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    One memory test included three 5-year-old chimps who'd been taught the order of Arabic numerals 1 through 9, ...

    Results showed that the chimps, while no more accurate than the people, could do this faster.
    Seems to me that these chimps were trained to perform this task. They've probably even used the test setup before whereas the humans were probably using it for the first time. I guess I'm not surprised that the chimps were faster than the humans. Also:

    But when the numbers were displayed for just four-tenths or two-tenths of a second, the chimp was the champ. The briefer of those times is too short to allow a look around the screen, and in those tests Ayumu still scored about 80 percent, while humans plunged to 40 percent.
    That says to me that a chimp is able to move its eyes around faster than a human is. This is also something I would expect. So perhaps this result says more about relative visual ability than relative cognitive ability?
    1. Re:Not a comparison of cognitive ability by Xzzy · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It doesn't test anything such as deduction and problem solving either, which is where I would bet humans have the advantage.

      Repeat the test with a predictable pattern of numbers (or symbols, doesn't really matter), and have the subjects try to guess the next in the sequence.

  3. Boringly predictable research. by wolfen · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The best part about this news story is when you reach the
    end of the article and the researchers reveal that
    their results are basically meaningless because you
      can get the same results by testing children versus adults.

    The real question is how to human children compare with the young chimpanzees.

  4. Bullshit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I was jailed once.

    There we had phone cards with a long number (12 digits) and we needed to buy them to be able to call our families.

    Almost everyone there were able to memorize that number just reading it once. A short glance will mean you lost your credit. Most people would memorize the numbers in privacy to avoid showing the card in public. I aquired that hability in just 5 minutes of needing it. I could only do it once, when I was really inside everybody would be ultracareful with their cards.

    So the only reason humans don't do it is because we are lazy and rely on notebooks and other stuff to remember things. Put pressure on the test subjects and they will outperform the chimps.