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The Alex Studies: Cognitive and Communicative Abilities of Grey Parrots, by Irene Maxine Pepperberg
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Can a parrot understand complex concepts and mean what it says? Since the early 1900s, most studies on animal-human communication have focused on great apes and a few cetacean species. Birds were rarely used in similar studies on the grounds that they were merely talented mimics--that they were, after all, "birdbrains." Experiments performed primarily on pigeons in Skinner boxes demonstrated capacities inferior to those of mammals; these results were thought to reflect the capacities of all birds, despite evidence suggesting that species such as jays, crows, and parrots might be capable of more impressive cognitive feats.
Twenty years ago Irene Pepperberg set out to discover whether the results of the pigeon studies necessarily meant that other birds--particularly the large-brained, highly social parrots--were incapable of mastering complex cognitive concepts and the rudiments of referential speech. Her investigation and the bird at its center--a male Grey parrot named Alex--have since become almost as well known as their primate equivalents and no less a subject of fierce debate in the field of animal cognition. This book represents the long-awaited synthesis of the studies constituting one of the landmark experiments in modern comparative psychology.
- Sales Rank: #654175 in Books
- Published on: 2002-04-30
- Released on: 2002-03-19
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.22" h x 1.07" w x 6.08" l, 1.38 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 448 pages
Amazon.com Review
When Irene Pepperberg, a professor at the University of Arizona, says goodnight, she typically hears the reply "Bye. I'm gonna go eat dinner. I'll see you tomorrow." Though the response itself is not unusual, the source is, for it comes from Alex, a gray parrot, Pepperberg's main research subject for the past 22 years. That parrots can talk is well known; what Pepperberg set out to study was their cognitive abilities. By teaching the bird the meaning--not just the sound--of words in order to communicate, she hoped to discover how his brain worked. She exhaustively details her fascinating results in The Alex Studies.
Pepperberg bought Alex--a parrot of average intelligence and without lofty pedigree or training--from a pet store when he was 1. Since working with Pepperberg, he has developed a 100-word vocabulary and can identify 50 different objects, recognizing quantities up to six, distinguishing seven colors and five shapes, and understanding the difference between big and small, same and different, over and under. He can tell you, for instance, that corn is yellow even if there is no corn in view, as well as correctly select the square object among various shapes and identify it verbally. What this all means, stresses Pepperberg, is that Alex is not merely parroting but actually thinking; he bases answers on reason rather than instinct or mimicry.
Though the anecdotes are rich and Alex makes a lively subject, this is principally a research paper relying on intricate details and a prodigious amount of data (the notes and references alone run to 79 pages). This is not light reading, particularly for the layperson. Still, The Alex Studies manages to be more than a valuable contribution to science, for in providing ample evidence of our similarities to other creatures, the book ultimately calls into question the concept of human supremacy over the animal kingdom. Pepperberg's stated goal is "to provoke awareness in humans that animals have capacities that are far greater than we were once led to expect, and to remind us that all we need to examine these capacities are some enlightened research tools." She has provided such tools in this seminal work. --Shawn Carkonen
Review
Alex's spectacular abilities were sensationalized in the news media, as though it were a talking parrot act. That obscured the significance of the studies, which is why The Alex Studies is important...[Irene Pepperberg has] done groundbreaking experiments, and bringing them together in a panoramic view is a great service...She describes simply what she did, and why and how her results compare with equivalent language-use and comprehension studies on chimps, marine mammals and children...She proves that animals have abilities greater than we are led to expect, but these can be revealed only by appropriate research tools. She succeeds where many others failed, and she convinces us that the details of investigative methods are what matter. The purpose is not to reveal Alex as a winged Einstein. Instead, she shows that complex mental operations are revealed only be precise methods that match the capabilities investigated. And she demonstrates remarkable parallels between parrots and humans. The core importance of social interaction in both learning and testing is crucial for her results. In that, her studies have relevance far beyond parrots. (Bernd Heinrich New York Times Book Review)
Alex's abilities are extraordinary, and Pepperberg's investigation of them makes The Alex Studies essential for anyone interested in the wider issues it raises...As with other pioneering works from Darwin's to E. O. Wilson's, its influence will be felt throughout the field of animal ethology for years to come. (Caroline Fraser Los Angeles Times)
Pepperberg's work is admirably rigorous. Earlier work with language-trained animals was notorious for poor design and overly charitable interpretations of data. Pepperberg, by contrast, takes careful precautions against inadvertent cueing. She uses conservative estimates of chance when assessing the statistical reliability of Alex's responses, and she shows restraint when interpreting her results...Pepperberg has organized her book in a quasi-historical fashion, framing each phase of her research in terms of the contemporary work that inspired or informed it. Each chapter is devoted to a particular capacity or competence, such as numerical cognition, categorization, or the comprehension of words...From those who wish to read selectively (or for instructors who wish to assign only one or two chapters) it should be quite welcome because each chapter can stand on its own reasonably well...The book should be accessible to a wide range of audiences, from researchers studying animal behavior to advanced undergraduates in a course that covers relevant material such as animal cognition or the capacities of language-trained animals. (Edward Kako Science)
Pepperberg has elegantly summarized her 20 years of success showing that an African Grey Parrot can match the cognitive and communicative competence of great apes. Her training paradigm involving reference, functionality and social interaction permits the expression of abilities hitherto unexpected in birds and challenges traditional views of the evolution of intelligence. (Charles T. Snowdon, University of Wisconsin, Madison)
Irene Pepperberg's studies of Alex are some of the most remarkable and significant in the whole field of animal cognition. Her evidence stands up to the closest scrutiny, and Alex the parrot turns out to have cognitive abilities that were not even suspected before Pepperberg began her work. (Marian Dawkins, University of Oxford)
For researchers in the field of animal cognition, Pepperberg brings together in a well organized form 20 years of her work with Grey parrots. In detailing the training and remarkable achievements of Alex and the other birds in Pepperberg's lab, The Alex Studies makes it clear that parrots are capable of much more than "parroting" or mechanically mimicking what they hear. But this book makes a much greater contribution. It provides a general integrative framework for the larger field of animal cognition, providing much needed links between important natural behavior selected for by evolutionary processes and theories and data from human cognitive development. (Thomas R. Zentall, University of Kentucky)
What distinguishes the work of Pepperberg from that of the majority of researchers working with language- trained apes is that she is truly interested in the underlying cognitive processes involved in her subject's behaviour. She thus asks questions…and then designs experiments to test the possibilities…this book represents a scholarly reporting of a scientist's quest to understand the mind of another species in as honest and rigorous a manner as is possible, under the circumstances of being both "parent" and investigator. (Michael Tomasello and Josep Call Animal Behaviour)
From the Back Cover
Irene Pepperberg's studies of Alex are some of the most remarkable and significant in the whole field of animal cognition. Her evidence stands up to the closest scrutiny, and Alex the parrot turns out to have cognitive abilities that were not even suspected before Pepperberg began her work. (Marian Dawkins, University of Oxford )
Most helpful customer reviews
81 of 84 people found the following review helpful.
Essential resource for anyone interested in animal cognition
By lois levin
This is essential reading for anyone interested in animal cognition. Dr. Pepperberg reviews her two decades of careful, systematic work with one African gray parrot and provides a detailed picture of the evolution of her ideas, methodologies and truly mind-boggling data. This is a well-written, easy to follow, well-organized account of her scientific work, of which most people have only had a brief glimpse (either in the press or from documentary films on PBS and the Discovery Channel).
The public is becoming increasingly aware of the complexity of animal minds, and I predict that this book will remain an excellent resource for years to come; it not only explain's the writer's seminal contribution to this fascinating interdisciplinary field, it also provides an historical context and theoretical rationale for the work of many other scientists studying language, cognition and animal behavior.
56 of 58 people found the following review helpful.
No parrot jokes please
By Amazon Customer
I can almost hear Irene Pepperberg saying that to us as she describes the significance of THE ALEX STUDIES. She herself offers a few humorous anecdotes about Alex, but for the most part there is definitely nothing funny about this book. It's written in a deliberately prosaic style for the following reasons. The very tendency for the media and general public to treat Alex as simply the "talking parrot", when in reality his vocalizations represent something much more important in terms of animal cognition and communication. Also stemming from the fact that her findings about bird cognition are so significant, Pepperberg in making her case to scientific colleagues, writes with them in mind. She is incredibly detailed in describing her experiments and the controls used. This is in order to avoid the possibility of cueing and thus comparisons to "clever Hans"; she wants to remove the possibility of persons saying the evidence is that most dreaded scientific epithet - merely "anecdotal". The book is replete with references and Pepperberg places them in the body of her text instead of as footnotes. The book is not a smooth read and only a scientist could describe it as "a delightful and easy read" as ethologist Marc Bekoff says on the cover. This is not a popular science book. But equally it takes an evoltionary biologist and ornithologist to see the "groundbreaking" significance of the book as Bernd Heinrich does.
Where does that leave us, the general reading public? If you take it in small pecks (couldn't resist one bird metaphor) you will be rewarded by some incredible insights into the cognitive powers of animals. We learn of abilities that scientists said perhaps (and that's a capital "P") resided only in Great Apes. Never was it imagined that birds possesed them. Pepperberg spends chapters discussing different capabilities such as numeric cognition, categorization, and word comprehension. Alex responded to Pepperberg's questions about "what color?" "what shape?" and "how many?" with appropriate answers. By far the most interesting responses were Alex's answers to conceptual problems. When asked "what's different" Alex showed he understood the concept of relativity by answering "larger".
The traditional view was that we know that animals are not sentient. Pepperberg's experiments show that what we "know" about animal cognition is not that much at all. How else can it be. Science has a history of a few hundred years and it was not that very long ago that we "knew" that the earth was flat or that it was at the center of the universe. Cognitive Ethology (the study of animal intelligence) is less than a generation old. Perhaps he's not the best source to quote since he's from a comedy, but that man in black, Tommie Lee Jones as "K" was absolutely right when he said "just imagine what we'll know tomorrow."
40 of 41 people found the following review helpful.
Meticulous
By A Customer
One of the preconceived notions I had before reading this book was that the quality of research would be rather soft around the edges... Sort of "feel good pseudo-science"... I was pleasantly surprised when I learned how meticulous and critical Pepperberg had obviously been in the course of her research. By not being afraid to challenge the traditional beliefs of animal cognition as well as boldy examining the potential pitfalls of her own approach, Pepperberg has delivered a compelling and meticulous body of scientific research that stands on its own. Pseudo-science? Definitely not. Feel good? Well, since I'm a parrot "owner" as well as always being fascinated by the subject of cognition, this book was a great read for me. The one downfall to all of this is that I'm constantly annoying my wife by trying to get her to participate in model-rival training sessions with our own African Grey. The bird, however, indulges me... Im sure he considers my efforts quite amusing.
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