Reading baboons leave scientists spellbound, may shed light on human learning
2012 04 13
From: VancouverSun.com / AFP
Baboons can recognize scores of written words, a feat that raises intriguing questions about how we learn to read, scientists reported on Thursday.
In a specially-made facility in France where they could come and go at will, monkeys learned to differentiate between a real word, such as KITE, and a nonsense word such as ZEVS.
The baboons had access to a large enclosure with several touch-sensitive computer screens, each projecting a four-letter word.
 A picture released on April 12, 2012 shows a baboon looking at a computer screen housed in a booth in Marseille. The animals freely enter the booths and complete multiple rounds of the computer-based exercise, in which they see a four-letter sequence appear and then tap one of two shapes on the screen to classify the sequence as a word or a non-word.
Photograph by: J. Fagot , AFP/Getty Images
The animals had to tap one of two shapes on the screen to show that they understood whether the word was a real one or garble.
Choosing the real word got them a tempting reward of food - a pellet of dry wheat that came from an automatic dispenser.
The six baboons used the computers up to 3,000 times a day, notching up an average total of 50,000 "trials" over a month and a half.
They learned to distinguish scores of words, identifying them with an accuracy of 75 per cent, according to the study led by Jonathan Grainger at the Cognitive Research Laboratory at France’s Aix-Marseille University.
There were 500 real words and 7,832 nonsense ones in the data bank.
"This ... is a remarkable result, given the level of orthographic similarity between the word and nonword," according to the paper, published by the U.S. journal Science.
"More detailed analysis revealed that baboons were not simply memorising the word ... but had learned to discriminate words from non-words on the basis of differences in the frequency of letter combinations."
The champion speller was a baboon called Dan, who learned 308 words, around three times as many as his chums.
[...]
Read the full article at: vancouversun.com
Video from: YouTube.com
Video from: YouTube.com
Related Articles
Iran Space monkey launch failed
Scientists Discover Mother Monkeys Who Kill Their Babies
The Matrix of Culture and Habit - 5 Monkey Syndrome (video)
Cognitive Dissonance in Monkeys - The Monty Hall Problem
Taiwan Produces Pixar-Like Video of Taliban Jihad Monkeys (Video)
Ebola Cured in Monkeys—Hope for Humans?
Monkeys Ponder What Could Have Been
Counting monkeys tick off yet another ’human’ ability
Latest News from our Front Page
|
Military Says No Presidential Authorization Needed To Quell “Civil Disturbances”
2013 05 17
A recent Department of Defense instruction alters the US code applying to the military’s involvement in domestic law enforcement by allowing US troops to quell “civil disturbances” domestically without any Presidential authorization, greasing the skids for a de facto military coup in America along with the wholesale abolition of Posse Comitatus.
The instruction (embedded at the end of this article), which ... |
Ancient Maya Pyramid Destroyed in Belize
2013 05 17
An archaeological group says it plans to take legal action.
Despite its small size, the Caribbean country of Belize is known for a few outstanding characteristics: a spectacular barrier reef, a teeming rain forest, and extensive Maya ruins.
It now has one fewer of those ruins.
A construction company in Belize has been scooping stone out of the major pyramid at the site ... |
Ginger: A Warming Herb
2013 05 17
Ginger is an Asian herb that is particularly well known to us in the West. Over time, and with trial and error, its stimulating properties and piquant flavor have been integrated into both our herbal “materia medica” and cuisine.
Brewed as an herbal tea, ginger root is particularly helpful for those people who have underactive stomachs and difficulty producing adequate amounts ... |
Australian man dead for 40 minutes revived with new CPR machine
2013 05 17
In an Australian first, doctors have used a new resuscitation technique to revive three patients who were clinically dead for up to an hour.
One of the lucky survivors was Colin Fiedler, 49, who was pronounced dead at The Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, Victoria, after suffering a heart attack, The Herald Sun reported.
Doctors brought Fieldler back to life using a U.S.-made ... |
How a pregnancy test for humans caused a wave of global extinctions
2013 05 17
The deadly fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis has been wiping out amphibian species across the globe for decades. But how did this global environmental disaster get started? A new study suggests that it came from doctors importing frogs for use in pregnancy tests.
Since the 1980s, amphibian species have experienced a sharp decline in their numbers. Some estimates suggest that 400 or more ... |
| More News » |
|
|
|
|
