Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id WAA11834 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Mon, 18 Dec 2000 22:01:51 GMT X-Sender: rrecchia@mail.clarityconnect.com X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Light Version 1.5.2 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk From: Ray Recchia <rrecchia@mail.clarityconnect.com> Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2000 16:57:58 -0500 Message-ID: <1234945818-13615162@mail.clarityconnect.com> Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
I have been reading a book on animal cognition by Marc Hauser of Harvard
called 'Wild Minds' that I think is pretty good. It summarizes a lot the
research done in this field in a very reader friendly way. There are
discussions of the ability of animals hink in terms of abstract terms like
colors and numbers, the ability of monkeys to use tools like strips of bark
they wrap around their feet to climb thorny trees, the inability of most
animals to recognize themselves in mirror, communication among birds, and a
number of other topics.
Here is an excerpt I thought might interest the group
"No animal has created a representational map outside its brain, a physical
drawing with clearly depicted routes and landmarks. In the 1970s, however,
the psychologist David Premack considered the possibility that a chimpanzee
might be able to understand and use a map created by humans. In the first
experiment, a chimpanzee watched as an experimenter concealed a food treat
under a doll-sized piece of furniture located in a three-dimensional
miniaturization (model) of a full sized room. The experimenter then led the
chimpanzee to the full-scale replica of the miniaturized room and allowed
the chimpanzee to search for the food. If the chimpanzee realized the
correspondence between the two rooms, then it should have no problem finding
the food. All the chimpanzees failed this test. By the age of approximately
four years, however, human children easily solve this scaling problem, going
from the miniature room to the full-scale one, as well as the other way around"
p. 80.
This becomes more significant when combined with some comparisons between
rat, infant humans, and adult human methods of dealing with problems of
orientation.
Here is a summary of an experiment involving rats:
one enclosure - rectangular - four white walls and no landmarks
second enclosure - rectangular - three white walls and one black wall
Rats watched as food was placed in one corner of the rectangle. For the
second enclosure the food was placed in corner where a white and black wall
intersected.
Spin the rat around until it is disoriented and then place it in one of the
two enclosures facing away from the food. The rat's behavior was the same
whether placed in enclosure one or enclosure two. 1/2 the time it would
head towards the diagonally opposite corner, ignoring the visual cue of the
black wall and attending exclusively to the geometric features of the room.
Similar but not identical experiments were conducted with humans:
Infants behave the same way as rats, focusing exclusively on the geometry of
the room and moving to the diagonally opposite corner 1/2 the time
regardless of the different color wall visual cue.
Adult humans will frequently go to the opposite corner but showed an
increased ability to go to the correct corner when there is a color cue.
Researchers have speculated that the adult humans ability to do better may
have something to do with the adult's ability to use language to encode
locations in space.
"For example, while searching for a ball in a room with one blue wall,
adults might rehearse the sentence 'The ball is the corner to the left of
the ball wall.' If adults use language in this way, then their navigational
abilities should deteriorate when the language system is used for another
purpose. In a recent experiment Spelke (the researcher) has shown that if
adults are required to repeat a sentence out loud while attempting to find
the target location, they fail. By talking out loud, adults are unable to
repeat the relevant linguistic information about spatial location and
therefore unable to rehearse the planned navigational route. This implies
that in the absence of language, abstract spatial representations simply
cannot evolve, or the case of humans, cannot be learned...."
p. 83
I highly recommend this book to anyone posting on this listserver.
Raymond O. Recchia
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