Evaluating Cognitive Abilities and Communicative Competence in an Exceptional Code

佩珀伯格博士研究物种间的交流和动物认知。她和她的学生使用一种特定的建模技术，训练一只非洲灰鹦鹉在回答关于颜色、形状、材料、相似和不同、缺乏信息、相对大小和数量等抽象类别的问题时，产生有声(英语)标签。在这些任务上，这种鸟的表现可以与类人猿和海洋哺乳动物相媲美。正在进行的研究，包括另外两只鹦鹉，将继续(1)研究鹦鹉对人类密码的获取，并检查驯养员物种身份的影响；(2)考察习得能力的水平--该代码可用于理解问题、数值概念、客体-客体关系、对等关系、介词、移位、动词的使用、识别二维形式、否定以及标注如何影响对象回忆和形式知觉；以及(3)研究社会建模如何为声乐学习的其他研究提供见解。这项工作的结果至少对三个领域有广泛的影响。(1)鸟类与哺乳动物大脑功能的研究：鉴于鸟类的大脑虽然与哺乳动物的大脑有很大不同，但它们处理信息的方式相似，佩珀伯格博士的程序能否帮助临床医生为大脑受损的人类设计程序？(2)向功能障碍的儿童教授语言的程序：佩珀伯格博士的训练技术正在被使用。对于发育迟缓的儿童，取得了一些成功；这些程序是否也适用于患有其他类型缺陷的儿童？(3)针对鹦鹉的野生动物保护倡议：如果鹦鹉像黑猩猩和海豚一样聪明，我们不应该像保护其他物种一样努力拯救它们和它们的栖息地吗？

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?