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Baboons Learn To Identify Words
thomst writes "Seth Borenstein of the AP reports on a story in the April 13 edition of Science (abstract here, full article paywalled) about a study of baboons at Aix-Marseille University in France that demonstrates the primates are capable of distinguishing between short, but real English words and gibberish letter combinations of similar length with an average of 75% accuracy over the course of 300,000 trials. One particularly talented subject named Dan, a 4-year-old baboon, is capable of 80% accuracy. The study's lead scientist, Jonathan Grainger, explains that a simple change in the study's methodology — allowing the subjects to work the training machine at times of their own choosing, rather than on a schedule determined by the researchers, made all the difference. When they are shown a sequence of letters, the subjects must choose between pushing a blue 'button' on a touchscreen (for a nonsense combination), or a green one (for an actual word). If they choose correctly, they get a food reward. Borenstein writes, 'The key is that these animals not only learned by trial and error which letter combinations were correct, but they also noticed which letters tend to go together to form real words, such as SH but not FX, said Grainger. So even when new words were sprung on them, they did a better job at figuring out which were real. Grainger said a pre-existing capacity in the brain may allow them to recognize patterns and objects, and perhaps that's how we humans also first learn to read.'"
As long as no one teaches them the term "Corporate Whore," I think we'd be better off than with what we've got.
Bobo no accept campaign contribution from Exxon. Bobo represent people.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
to get those baboons to edit /.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
The French were using english words?
If baboons can learn to recognize words is it ethical to use them in medical testing? Some retarded human beings can't do that much.
I wonder if this would work with other writing systems. Could they learn to tell real Chinese characters from random fake ones, for example?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
this is going to end with Charlton Heston on a beach cursing at the Statue of Liberty.
... welcome our new literate simian overlords.
"The study's lead scientist, Jonathan Grainger, explains that a simple change in the study's methodology — allowing the subjects to work the training machine at times of their own choosing, rather than on a schedule determined by the researchers, made all the difference."
What I take from this is that when I was in high school, I should have been able to get up at noon and go to school then if I wanted to. Guarantee I would have learned more in calculus than having it at 7:30am.
stop teaching useful skills to animals with big pointy teeth please
teach them to laugh at youtube or something
"allowing the subjects to work the training machine at times of their own choosing, rather than on a schedule determined by the researchers, made all the difference."
This is directly applicable to humans as well, and probably deserves more research.
Grainger said a pre-existing capacity in the brain may allow them to recognize patterns and objects
That reminds me of a column I read a while ago suggesting exactly that, and offering an evolutionary basis for it, along with an explanation for conspiracy theories. I guess this means that literacy begets superstition?
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
First, I would want to start with animals of even higher (subjective, to me) intelligence -- crows, african grey parrots, octopui, squid, elephants, bees, maybe domestic dogs and cats -- and then perform similar experimentation with all forms of human language: gesture (sign) language, written language and especially spoken language. I would especially like to do a double-blinded study with safely-administered psychedelics. We already know that psychedelics have a large effect on the language center of the human mind, so it would be natural for a similar effect to be present upon other animals. Most of those animals already have proven to have communication mechanisms and tool-using capabilities that are non-trivial, and so I feel they already have a similar language capability to humans. Those could be even potentiated through the use of thought-enhancing drugs.
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
Words are made up of letters. Letters are specific shapes. So words are basically patterns of shapes. The baboons are able to identify specific patterns of shapes 75% of the time. That should come as no surprise, because in their natural environment, they must also be able to identify specific patterns of shapes to survive. Teaching them new patterns, while interesting, is just expanding on what they already do in nature.
It does not mean, however, they can distinguish one word from another, such as dog and cat, although I am sure they can be trained to do that. Nor does it mean that they can interpret the pattern d o g or the pattern c a t to mean a dog or a cat, although, again, I'm sure they can be trained to do that. The real question, as it relates to reading, is can they assimilate what they are seeing. If not, they aren't actually reading.
While driving a car and stopping because you see a big octagon shaped sign is not the same as reading the word "STOP" on it, even though both give the same desired outcome.