258 Chapter 7 Thinking and Intelligence
actually scored slightly better with new objects
than with familiar ones, suggesting that he was
not merely “parroting” a set of stock phrases.
He could also sum two small sets of objects,
such as nuts or jelly beans, for amounts up to six
(Pepperberg, 2006).
Alex was able to say remarkably appropriate
things in informal interactions. He would tell
Pepperberg, “I love you,” “I’m sorry,” and, when
she was feeling stressed out, “Calm down.” One
day, Alex asked Pepperberg’s accountant, “Wanna
nut?” “No,” said the accountant. “Want some
water?” “No,” she said. “A banana?” “No.” After
making several other suggestions, Alex finally
said, “What do you want?” (quoted in Talbot,
2008). To the sorrow of thousands of his admir-
ers all over the world, Alex died suddenly in 2007.
Pepperberg is continuing her work with other
African grays.Thinking About the Thinking of
Animals LO 7.21
These results on
animal language and
cognition are impres-
sive, but scientists are
still divided over justPsychology in the News
these studies are doing. Do they have true lan-
guage? Are they thinking, in human terms? Howheard the words combined in that way before. He
picked up language as children do, by observing
others using it and through normal social interac-
tion. He has also learned to manipulate keyboard
symbols to request favorite foods or activities
(games, TV, visits to friends) and to announce his
intentions.
Research on animal language and com-
prehension of symbols is altering our under-
standing of animal cognition, and not only of
primates. Dolphins have learned to respond to
requests made in two artificial languages, one
consisting of computer-generated whistles and
another of hand and arm gestures (Herman,
Kuczaj, & Holder, 1993; Herman & Morrel-
Samuels, 1996). Taking the meaning of symbols
and their order (syntax) into account, they were
able to understand the difference between “To
left Frisbee, right surfboard take” and “To right
surfboard, left Frisbee take.”
Some psychologists are calling border collies
“the new chimps,” ever since researchers discov-
ered that a border collie named Rico and another
named Betsy had acquired vocabularies of more
than 200 words (Kaminski, Call, & Fisher, 2004;
Morell, 2008). Since then, another border collie,
Chaser, has stunned the public and psycholo-
gists by showing that she knows more than 1,100
words. When Chaser is asked to retrieve an object
from another room, she can do it with astonish-
ing accuracy. Even more impressive, when a new
toy she had never seen (a Darwin doll) was placed
among a dozen of her familiar toys and she was
asked to fetch it, she did. She paused and walked
among the toys, seemingly making an inference:
Because none of the familiar toys matched the
request, the new Darwin toy must be the one that
was wanted.
Most amazingly, we now know that birds
are not as bird-brained as once assumed. Irene
Pepperberg (2000, 2002, 2008) has been working
since the late 1970s with African gray parrots.
Her favorite, named Alex, learned to count, clas-
sify, and compare objects by vocalizing English
words. When he was shown up to six items and
was asked how many there were, he responded
with spoken (squawked?) English phrases,
such as “two cork(s)” or “four key(s).” He even
responded correctly to questions about items
specified on two or three dimensions, as in “How
many blue key(s)?” or “What matter [material]
is orange and three-cornered?” Alex also made
requests (“Want pasta”) and answered simple
questions about objects (“What color [is this]?”
“Which is bigger?”). When presented with a
blue cork and a blue key and asked “What’s the
same?” he would correctly respond “color.” HeAlex was a remarkably clever bird. His abilities have
raised intriguing questions about the intelligence of ani-
mals and their capacity for specific aspects of language.About Animal CognitionThinking
CriTiCally