Posted on 04/04/2013 5:28:56 AM PDT by Sir Napsalot
ATLANTA – Humans’ closest animal relatives, chimpanzees, have the ability to “think about thinking” – what is called “metacognition,” according to new research by scientists at Georgia State University and the University at Buffalo.
Michael J. Beran and Bonnie M. Perdue of the Georgia State Language Research Center (LRC) and J. David Smith of the University at Buffalo conducted the research, published in the journal Psychological Science of the Association for Psychological Science.
“The demonstration of metacognition in nonhuman primates has important implications regarding the emergence of self-reflective mind during humans’ cognitive evolution,” the research team noted.
(snip) “There has been an intense debate in the scientific literature in recent years over whether metacognition is unique to humans,” Beran said.
Chimpanzees at Georgia State’s LRC have been trained to use a language-like system of symbols to name things, giving researchers a unique way to query animals about their states of knowing or not knowing.
In the experiment, researchers tested the chimpanzees on a task that required them to use symbols to name what food was hidden in a location. If a piece of banana was hidden, the chimpanzees would report that fact and gain the food by touching the symbol for banana on their symbol keyboards.
But then, the researchers provided chimpanzees either with complete or incomplete information about the identity of the food rewards.
(Read more about the rest of the experiments)
(Excerpt) Read more at gsu.edu ...
So if I just sat around thinking about thinking of apple pie, would I actually go and get some or would I starve to death thinking about thinking about it?
World’s Smartest Dog? Meet a Border Collie Whose Memory Astounds
PBS host Neil deGrasse Tyson visited Pilley and Chaser recently for a Nova documentary and quizzed the dog’s remarkable memory with a random sampling of toys. The toys were placed in another room, and as Tyson called out the items by name, Chaser would go and retrieve them.
Tyson also brought along a new toy — a doll named “Darwin” — which Chaser had never seen before. When he asked her to find it in the other room, Chaser could locate the doll amid the other toys, inferring that the new object was connected with the new word.
“Whoa! “ Tyson said to Chaser, tail wagging with “Darwin” in her mouth.
Chaser has also demonstrated the ability to understand verbs, including “find,” “nose” and “paw,” performing each of the actions on any of the 1000 objects.
Researchers suggest that Chaser’s abilities represent far more than an impressive trick — they could give insight into how human beings learn language. Other dogs have shown a similar knack for acquiring words.
“The flexibility we see in dogs seems to be very similar to what you see in young children at a very important age in their development,” said animal researcher Brian Hare at the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences.
The dog used deductive reasoning to figure out the new toy. Pretty amazing, but dogs are amazing.
Anyone that would think about thinking has a mental problem!
Apparently, graduates of Bowdoin College do not have this ability, even though apes might. (See article before this one.)
I saw that on Netflix — it was pretty amazing. You could see the wheels turning in the dog’s head. :)
Would NFL rules permit playing a 'Squatch at nose tackle? They're smart enough to stay unproven...
*LOL*...yeah I would’ve been yellin shut up already
Saw that, too.
Not only amaizing, the dog is simply adorable.
I’m impressed when my little Bichon carries his empty plate and drops it in front of me. LOL
Amazing. Meanwhile, due to sequestration, we’re struggling to get ammo for our soldiers to conduct individual weapons quals, the economy is sinking, healthcare providers are turning away cancer patients, hunger is again becoming a major problem, our president wants to use drones to kill US citizens in the US without a warrant, and God only knows what’s going to happen in Korea.
But we spent a bunch of money to try to show a dumb animal thinks about thinking.
Yeah, we have our priorities straight. America is now full of retards worried about whether it’s okay they treat their dogs like people while they pen up people like dogs. Then we pat ourselves on the back . . . because of how well we treat our dogs.
All this so they can “prove” that humans are not superior to animals?
Show me one hospital that was ever built by an animal.
This creates an interesting paradox.
If you take a wild animal, especially a predator, they do a lot of “non-thinking thinking”. Kind of hard to describe, yet they do not get bogged down in figuring out a best course of action, but use their prejudices and “best guesses” to achieve their outcome.
Even humans can access this somewhat, as it has been noted that while most people cannot accurately guess something they can rationally think about, they are very good at guessing *about* the right answer.
For example, if, in no particular order, you put three piles of pills on a table, one with 90, one with 100, and one with 110, you can probably guess which is which, as well as *about* how many there are in each of them. (”About 100 in each”.)
However, “thinking about thinking” gives humans some odd advantages, while costing us the speed of “non-thinking thinking”. The most important of these advantages is the ability to use “abstracts”.
The king abstract is mathematics, but it is far from the only one. Others include universally understood pictures (illustrations), for example even something as simple as a stick man figure. If you learn that it represents a man, from then on, it always represents a man, and nobody needs to explain it to you if you see a similar picture in the future.
Another great abstract is language, both non-verbal and verbal. Even many animals can learn what spoken human words mean, some animals even learning the context of them; even though only a few, like parrots, can not only mimic them, but do it in context.
And a few, like some gorillas, can use a pictographic language to communicate. And, it’s been noted, even teach language to their offspring.
Another superb advantage of “thinking about thinking” is planning. Planning is an incredibly ordered and straightforward abstract. To the point that the planning outline formalized by Sun Tzu, in the 6th Century B.C. is very similar to that used by all modern armies today.
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Thanks Sir Napsalot. |
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