Evaluating Cognitive Abilities and Communicative Competence in an Exceptional Code

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Dr. Pepperberg studies interspecies communication and animal cognition. Using a specific modeling technique, she and her students have trained an African Grey parrot to produce vocal (English) labels in response to questions about abstract categories of color, shape, material, similarity and difference, absence of information, relative size, and quantity. On these tasks, the bird's performance is comparable to that of great apes and marine mammals. Ongoing research, which includes two additional parrots, will continue to (1) study acquisition of a human code by parrots and examine the effects of species identity of the trainers; (2) examine the level of acquired competence--the extent to which this code can be used for comprehending questions, numerical concepts, object-object relations, equivalence relations, prepositions, displacement, use of verbs, recognizing 2-dimensional forms, negation, and how labeling might affect object recall and form perception; and (3) examine how social modeling may offer insights into other studies of vocal learning. The results of this work have wide-ranging implications for at least three areas. (1) Studies of avian versus mammalian brain function: Given that the avian brain, although considerably different from that of mammals, can process information in similar ways, might Dr. Pepperberg's procedures assist clinicians who are devising programs for brain-damaged humans? (2) Programs for teaching language to dysfunctional children: Dr. Pepperberg's training techniques are being used, with some success, for developmentally-delayed children; might the procedures also work for children with other types of deficits? (3) Targeting parrots for wildlife conservation initiatives: If parrots are as intelligent as chimpanzees and dolphins, shouldn't we make the same attempts to save them and their habitat as we are making for these other species?