Crows too Clever: Can use tools, understand the concept of zero, and follow basic analogies. A new study now suggests that they have a better understanding of a particular complex cognitive principle than they do monkeys and comparable with Children little ones.
The researchers found that crows could discern paired elements buried in larger sequences, a cognitive ability known as repetition. Consider the sentence “The cat that was being chased by the dog meowed.” Admittedly, the sentence is a grammatical nightmare, and most adults soon realize that the cat is meowing and the dog is chasing the cat. This ability to pair things like “cat” with “meow” and “dog” with “chase” in a sentence, or in any sequence, was previously seen A unique human trait.
However, the new study indicates that crows can, too. This latest research builds on previous work that demonstrated the existence of Recursive logic among monkeys. “One of the defining features of human communicative cognition may not be specific to humans at all,” he said. Science lives in a letter Diana A. Liao Lead author and postdoctoral candidate at the University of Tübingen (Germany).
The Grammar It is not the only place where recursion occurs. our ears They can distinguish a musical phrase within a larger piece, and our minds can ignore the mathematical expression enclosed in parentheses. In fact, Study 2020 Published in the journal Science advances He showed that people can follow recursive patterns even without formal training in reading and mathematics.
In that study, people from isolated Amazonian tribes identified recursive patterns almost as well as adults living in the United States. Non-human primates have also demonstrated their ability to understand recursion. The same study found that Rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) They were inferior to young children when it came to distinguishing paired elements, such as open and closed parentheses, from a tangle of symbols.
The New studio Posted in advance science, It builds on this work to extend findings beyond primates. “The study is well designed and executed, and the results are clear and convincing,” he said. Stephen Ferrigno, Assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and lead author of the 2020 paper. Ferrigno was not involved in the new study.
Liao and his colleagues began by teaching two ravens (Corvus corone) to identify ravens letter or symbol {}, [ ] and <> , reward them with a treat only when the birds peck in the order of a centrally nested recursive sequence, such as {()} or ({}). It took the birds about a week to learn to click the symbols in this order, after which the crows sat down to do the final tests: strings of similar symbols they hadn’t seen yet, such as {} [ ].
Humans, young children, and monkeys who encounter such a test often understand that if {()} is true, then { [ ] } also [ { } ] it is.
As for the crows, not only did they perform as well as preschoolers on these types of tests, but they, too They beat the monkeys. In a 2020 study, adult humans chose a central fused structure between 60% and 90% of the time; Kids did it 43% of the time. and monkeys 26% of the time. In the new study, crows chose centrally compact structures about 40% of the time.
This finding suggests that the ability to define recursive sequences, which is often considered a defining feature of a language, may have initially evolved for other purposes. “The discovery that non-linguistic animals – monkeys and crows – can represent these complex sequences suggests that this ability may have evolved.” outside the realm of language. Ferrigno pointed out.
It is also possible that recursive logic is a key component of communication, even for crows. “If singing corvids can understand and produce repetitive structures, they might also use them to communicate vocally and manage their complex social relationships,” Liao said.
From a neurobiological perspective, the findings open the door to questions about How non-mammalian brains perform cognitive actions It was previously thought to be off-limits to animals that lack the six-layered neocortex. The expert added: “Our results indicate that some brain structures, such as the striatal cortex of primates, are not essential for repetitive comprehension.” “It would be great to do more research into the neural circuits underlying this ability.”
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