Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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.

16 of 271 comments (clear)

  1. BAC! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I demand blood alcohol content tests!

    At least make the chimps do banana flavored shots the night before ...

  2. 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.
    1. Re:Misleading... by Quiet_Desperation · · Score: 5, Funny

      Why is this post modded (at time of my reply) off-topic.

      Because you've been modded by college students instead of chimps?

  3. Re:Should I have a million apes in my basement by $RANDOMLUSER · · Score: 5, Funny

    Why would you want to memorize Asians?

    --
    No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
  4. In other news... by eviloverlordx · · Score: 5, Funny

    A large group of chimpanzees has produced the collected works of Shakespeare four times faster than the same number of college students, and with fewer spelling errors.

    --
    'Loose' is when your pants are three sizes too big. 'Lose' is when you misuse 'loose'.
  5. Actually, it kind of makes sense by $RANDOMLUSER · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That a chimp would do it faster. A human would instinctively put a "name" on each number seen, thus slowing down the "processing".

    --
    No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
  6. Yes, but... by lazlo · · Score: 5, Funny

    The chimps scored better than the college students on memory tests, but their term papers were only marginally better.

    --
    Pound! Bang! Bin! Bash! is this a shell script or a Batman comic?
  7. 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.

  8. 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.

  9. Well no shit... by R2.0 · · Score: 5, Funny

    I am positive that, after 6 years (2 degrees) of drinking and sleep deprivation, I am significantly dumber than I was going in to school.

    --
    "As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
  10. Re:Reinforcement by techpawn · · Score: 5, Funny

    Thanks for that insight Coco! Now get back in your cage and stop using my Wi-Fi!

    --
    Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
  11. Brain speed != intelligence by EmbeddedJanitor · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The speed at which you see and respond is not at all linked to intelligence. It is far more linked to your need for this speed (ie. due to evolution), priimarily driven by your need to control motion and for feeding.

    For example animals which feed by catching fast moving bugs in their mouth (eg. birds and fish) need to respond very quickly otherwise their food is long gone. Animals that eat berries and kill their food or have paws and hands don't have to be that fast. Animals that live in trees etc and need to judge distance better (monkeys etc) need faster responses than ground based humans etc.

    I forget what this effect is called, but I understand that trout have a speed 20x that of humans. That's to be expected when a trout has to feed by eating little bugs coming past it in fast moving water. The trout has to be able to respond quickly to make an energy efficient movement and get the bug before it has gone. The energy in a small gnat is not enough to waste on charging around the stream.

    As a result of this, I'm not at all suprised that a chimp beats a human in a low level counting game.

    --
    Engineering is the art of compromise.
  12. Re:Obligatory... by diodia_teres · · Score: 5, Funny

    So I guess in college when all those girls claimed that they forgot my number, they were telling the truth.

  13. Re:Obligatory... by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 5, Funny

    No, no, no...

    You got it all wrong. The joke goes:

    In Soviet Russia, noun verbs YOU!

    So, in this case, we'd have:

    In Soviet Russia, chimps outscore YOU!!!

    Or, perhaps, even worse:

    In Soviet Russa, college students outscore YOU!!!

    In our next Slashdot Memes 101 lesson, we'll cover Beowulf Clusters:

    Can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of chimps?

    --
    My blog
  14. 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.