A Good Book: Animals in Translation

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“One day their corporate sponsors were visiting Dr. Pepperberg’s lab, and she and her staff wanted to show off what Alex and Griffin [two parrots being trained to sound out phonemes, in order to show recursive language use] could do. So they put a bunch of colored plastic refrigerator letters on a tray and started asking Alex questions.

‘Alex, what sound is blue?’

Alex made the sound ‘Sssss.’ That was right; the blue letter was ‘S.’

Dr. Pepperberg said, ‘Good birdie,’ and Alex said, ‘Want a nut,’ because he was supposed to get a nut whenever he gave the right answer.

But Dr. Pepperberg didn’t want him sitting there eating a nut during the limited time she has with their sponsors, so she told Alex to wait, and then asked, ‘What sound is green?’
The green example was the letter combination of ‘SH’ and Alex said, ‘Shssh.’ He was right again.

Dr. Pepperberg said, ‘Good parrot,’ and Alex said, ‘Want a nut.’

But Dr. Pepperberg said, ‘Alex, wait. What sound is orange?’

Alex got that one right, too, and he still didn’t get his nut. They just kept going on and on, making him sound out letters for his audience. Alex was obviously getting more frustrated by the minute.

Finally Alex lost his patience.

Here’s the way Dr. Pepperberg describes it: Alex ‘gets very slitty-eyed and he looks at me and states, ‘Want a nut. Nnn, uh, tuh.’

Alex had spelled ‘nut.’ Dr. Pepperberg and her team were spending hours and hours training him on plastic refrigerator letters to see if Alex could eventually be taught that words are made out of sounds, and he already knew how to spell. He was miles ahead of them.”

  • Animals in Translation, Temple Grandin

Dunamis

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Fascinating…

As a side point - what are you doing this New Year?

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Also from the book,

“Going over the evidence, a group of Australian anthropologists believes that during all those years when early humans were associating with wolves [approx.100,000 years ago] they learned to act and think like wolves. Wolves hunted in groups; humans didn’t. Wolves had complex social structures; humans didn’t. Wolves had loyal same-sex and nonkin friendships; humans probably didn’t, judging from the lack of the same-sex and nonkin friendships in every other primate species today. (The main relationship for chimpanzees is parent child.) Wolves were highly territorial; humans probably weren’t – again judging by how nonterritorial all other primates are today.

By the time these early people became truly modern, they had learned to do all these wolfie things. When you think about how different we are from other primates, you see how doglike we are. A lot of the things we do that the other primates don’t are dog things. The Australian group thinks it was the dog that showed us.

They take their line of reasoning even further. Wolves, and then dogs, gave our early humans a huge survival advantage, they say, by serving as lookouts and guards, and by making it possible for humans to hunt big game in groups instead of hunting small prey as individuals. Given everything wolves did for early man, dogs were probably a big reason why early man survived and Neanderthals didn’t. Neanderthals didn’t have dogs…

Maybe the most amazing new finding is that wolves didn’t just teach us a lot of useful new behaviors. Wolves probably also changed the structure of our brains. Fossil records show that whenever a species becomes domesticated its brain gets smaller. The horse’s brain shrank by 16%; the pig’s brain shrank as much as 34%; and the dog’s brain shrank 10 to 30%…

Now archeologists have discovered that 10,000 years ago, just at the point when humans began to give their dogs formal burials, the human brain began to shrink, too. It shrank by 10%, just like the dog’s brain. And what’s interesting is what part of the human brain shrank. In all of the domestic animals the forebrain, which holds the frontal lobes, and the corpus callosum, which is the connecting tissue between the two sides of the brain, shrank. But in humans it was the midbrain, which handles emotions and sensory data, and the olfactory bulbs, which handle smell, that got smaller while the corpus callosum and the forebrain stayed pretty much the same. Dog brains and human brains specialized: humans took over the planning and organizing tasks, and dogs took over the sensory tasks."

Dunamis

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Interesting stuff Dunny, but I’m not even slightly convinced with the bit you posted here.

The issue with the parrot, of course is, does it truly understand or is it simply associating, remembering and mimicking?

Firstly, was the Dr the only person who has ever spoken to the parrot? If not, who is to say, another handler didn’t go “nnn…uh…tuh” very slowly when feeding it?

Secondly, even if the Dr was the only person who had access to the bird, then she most likely spoke the word ‘nut’ quite slowly to get the bird to associate the sound with the object. If so, slowly speaking the word ‘nnn…uh…tuh’ to the parrot and it picking up syllables within the word doesn’t seem to require more than a good ear and skill for mimicking. Its hardly proof of understanding or intelligence.

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You’re not getting it. But I’m in no mood to argue. Hence it is posted in Mundane Babble.

Dunamis

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I saw a doc on TV a few years ago that showed chimps hunting, patroling, and raping in packs. So, I wonder about the wolf concept.

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Ohhh, in a bad mood are we. [-X

So the parrot skipped over the coloured plastic symbols and went to what I consider a simpler, more direct linkage between words and phonemes. After all, hearing discrete sounds is where this mimic is master.

You don’t have to argue. Just tell me, in a few words what I’m missing and why this is such a revelation.

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The first thing that you “missed” is that the parrot is doing something that no bird before this bird had ever been thought to be able to do, be trained to abstract the quality of “color” to “shape”. In picking out the letters by color, and then pronouncing them, he is already displaying “intelligence”, by whatever undefined sense you seem to be using the word. His further abstraction of the phoneme to circumstance is just another example. But the point isn’t that parrots are language users in a strict sense, but that language use is a plastic, gradated concept, (with the suggestion that perhaps a fair amount of what we do might be mimicry as well - he was taught through observational learning and not classical conditioning). The further point is that this is a book recommendation, and not a philosophical argument. The furthest point is that it is a humorous story. The point that falls into the chasm is, don’t read the book.

Dunamis

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Hello F(r)iends,

For a second there I thought the parrot was going to spell out SHIT… afterall, the first two letters were S and H. It is an amusing passage of the book. Is the book full of such amusing passages? Also, I found it interesting that the bird had surpassed the expectations of the trainer/teachers…

-Thirst

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Thirst,

Yes the book is full of such descriptive illustrations. It was written by a woman who actually is autistic, but nonetheless got her PhD and specializes in neuropsychology. She is most well known as a consultant to meat packing plants and slaughter houses, as she has designed more humane systems for the cattle. As an autistic she feels she has deeper insight into animal perception, which like her “think in pictures.” About half the book is absolutely fantastic, and the other half looses focus. But as you note, the purpose of the parrot story really is to illustrate that animals very likely have intelligence beyond our understanding, and we just don’t know how to ask for it, or notice it. In particular lab conditions and the assumptions of classical conditioning masked our ability to perceive animal intelligence, rather than test it. For instance this particular Dr. realized that instead of trying to teach a parrot the color “blue” using triangles and squares, she used objects a parrot would naturally be interested in, and painted them blue. She sees animals more like autistic savants, low general intelligence IQ minds with some extraoridinary capabilities.

Dunamis

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Hello F(r)iends,

Dunamis, the information about wolf-influences and the resulting specialization of the mind fascinates me (Keynes is one of my heroes! :slight_smile: ). I wonder how much archaelogical and other “factual” information they provide to support this notion? Also, I have to wonder how intelligent hogs were in the past… They remain, as I recall, one of the most intelligent creatures today and this may be despite losing a third of their capacity!

Any chance you could provide another interesting passage?

-Thirst

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Thirst,

Some of the sources she references on dogs and man are:

“Multiple and Ancient Origins of the Domestic Dog,” Science 276, no. 13 (June 1997):1687-89
and,

info.anu.edu.au/mac/Newsletters_ … /dogs.html

The dog/wolf thing is just a passing anecdote in the wide sweep of her point, so there’s not much more to report there – although I agree it is a very interesting idea. As to pigs they are quite bright. She tells a story of an automated pig feed system where each pig has a collar and they enter into a stall which opens once for each collar. A pre-measured amount of food pours out, so each pig gets a certain portion. Apparently there are cases of pigs finding collars loose on the ground, picking them up with their teeth and carrying them to the stalls for second helpings. How they know the thing around their neck is causes the whole system to function, is beyond me.

Dunamis

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Thanks for explaining that but we’ll have to agree to disagree. I stand by my claim – on what you’ve posted here – that I’m not even slightly convinced that this bird is exhibiting ‘intelligence’.

We may be differing on what we call ‘intelligence’ of course so, in this case, I would define intelligence as the ability to see a pattern beyond the obvious object/reflex conditioning. It seems however, that what you see as intelligent; I see as quintessential conditioning.

That’s just it; It is not showing anything of the sort.

The parrot was shown a blue S-shape and made the sound “ssss”. The parrot was shown a green H-shape and combined (apparently?) the letters to make the sound “shhhh.” Then an orange shape… and so on. Where is the evidence that it “abstracted the quality of colour to shape?

When the parrot was shown a particular coloured-blob or shape-blob or colour+shape blob (combined) the parrot was conditioned to make a certain sound. On the evidence here, we don’t know what the bird was using as its conditioning link (colour, shape, combination) without further tests.

If the bird was shown different sized S’s in different materials and made an ‘sssss’ sound with each of these, then it could be said that the bird recognised a pattern within and showed something beyond rote conditioning. If the bird was shown only blue objects (of various shapes) and made the ssss sound, that too would indicate a level beyond mechanical, repetitive learning.

The most ‘intelligent’ thing the parrot did was to say “I want nut. Nnn… uh… tuh” – that is, sounded out the object it wanted in the two conditioned ways – quickly (as a word) and slowly (as a phonemes). But even here, it seems to be only a conditioned response mimicked quickly then slowly as it had most likely been trained. Again, there’s nothing new here.

Absolutely, but we are talking about a parrots intelligence not about humans use of basic conditioning. Back to the subject…

So when does ‘classical conditioning’ not contain ‘observational’ learning?

I wont go anywhere near the humans and wolves part of the book. That, too, is riddled with sweeping generalisations, grand assumptions and ‘facts’ one is asked to believe without a scintilla of evidence. Its farcical – the unscientific methodology and non sequiturs jump out even in the few paragraphs you’ve posted.

Here, we agree. It seems the entire book is a ‘humorous story’. =D> I’d much prefer to fall victim to a humorous hoax than to take one sentence of this book seriously.

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like I said, arguing with another mindless ILPer who doesn’t have clue, isn’t the reason I posted this. I read half your post, and discontinued with the rest, as you seem unable to produce an interesting point, nor even able to understand the experiment itself. It would be nice if you knew even the difference between “clasical conditioning” and “observational learning”.

Dunamis

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To further clear up the innovative training of this parrot, which may be interesting to some:

"Dr. Pepperberg decided to give up on operant conditioning and try a different branch of behaviorism called “social modeling theory.” Albert Bandura developed social modeling theory at Stanford University in the 1970’s, based on how he thought real people and real animals probably learned in the world. For years behaviorists had assumed that animals and people leaned everything they know through either operant or classical conditioning…But Dr. Bandura pointed out that stimulus-response learning animals did in labs was just learning by trial and error…That sounds like a logical way to learn until you think what it would mean in the wild. In the real world, trial and error learning would get a lot of animals killed….In Dr. Bandura’s view, animals and people had to do a huge amount of observational learning….Today we know that Dr. Bandura was right, partly thanks to Susan Mineka’s research on monkeys and snakes, but it didn’t occur to anyone to try using it in their research on animal learning.

That was Dr. Pepperberg’s innovation. She set up a social modeling situation for Alex [the grey parrot]. Instead of teaching Alex one-on-one she taught him two on one, two people to one bird. And instead of teaching Alex directly, she taught to the other person, while Alex sat on his perch and watched. No one had ever done that before.

She also used items a parrot really, really wants, like a nice, crunchy piece of bark, for her learning materials. Animals and people both pay attention to things that are important to them, like food, and you have to pay attention to learn. A parrot in the wild doesn’t care about blue triangles, so why should he care about blue triangles in the lab? He doesn’t.

So if Dr. Pepperburg wanted Alex to learn the color blue, she took a nice, crunchy piece of bark and painted it blue. Then she’d sit down with Alex and her research assistant and ask the assistant, “What color?”

If the assistant got the answer right, he got to play with the bark. If the assistant go the answer wrong, he didn’t get to play with the bark. All Alex got to do was watch. Dr. Pepperberg called her technique model/rival, because the assistant was a model for Alex to copy, but also a rival for whatever item Dr. Pepperberg was using in her lesson. She set up a competition for scarce resources between Alex and her assistant.

Using the modeling theory was a breakthrough. Alex learned so much that he started asking questions of his own! One day he looked at his reflection in the mirror and asked Dr. Pepperberg, “What color?”

After he asked about his own color six different times, and heard answers like “That’s gray; you’re a grey parrot” six different times, he knew gray as a category. From then on he could tell his trainer whether or not any object she showed him was gray.

This is nothing short of miraculous as far as I am concerned. Alex was never taught to ask questions; he just did so on his own, spontaneously. That’s incredible, because question asking seems to be a separate skill from making statements, judging by the language of autistic children. Autistic children who can talk rarely ask questions; some of them never do."

Dunamis

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:smiley: Dunny, you’re embarrassing yourself.

Unless you are an expert on animal behaviour and conditioning, then you can claim no crown here. If not, then my opinion carries exactly the same weight as yours. FULL STOP.

My only concern with both these examples is the lack of scientific methodology driving the two claims. That’s it. If you think that demanding more a rigorous methodology before making stupidly wild claims is ‘mindless’, then so be it.

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Okay genius. Explain your point:

“So when does ‘classical conditioning’ not contain ‘observational’ learning?”

Like I thought. An idiot.

Dunamis

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Look at my post again. It was a question; I was asking you. I do not have a supersized, brittle ego like you, so I’m happy to ask, happy to learn and happy to change my mind.

It was a question Dunny – see its you who doesn’t get it.

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Its a question from someone who has not idea what conditioning is, but whose entire definition of intelligence relies on such knowledge. In otherwords, from someone who is hopelessly confused, but whose confusion doesn’t keep them from taking positions. The bloody parrot could pick out letters by their color, letters whose associative color he did not already know, and sound out those those letters. The parrot bloody asked what color he was, and then could name that color when it was exhibited by other objects. That you can’t see intelligence, which you define by associations that surpass “obvious object/reflex” conditioning seem more to indicate your lack of intelligence rather than that of the parrot’s.

Dunamis

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Just for the record here Skinner and other behaviorists believe that all learning in everyone is a form of conditioning. Operant conditioning is learning from acting in an environment and we hear about modeling.

The message is that all creatures work this way but just on different levels of complexity.

On a personal note, I keep an open mind about parrots, as I have been around some impressive ducks and they have a similar head size.