Chimpanzees Beat out Children in Reasoning Test

caffeinemessiah writes "The New York Times has a story on how chimpanzees seem to exhibit a better understanding of cause and effect than human children. While training chimps to perform a routine task with redundant steps, the chimps were able to figure out and eliminate the redundant steps, while the human children routinely performed them despite their evident uselessness. It says something about the way we learn compared to chimps and should be interesting to cognitive scientists and those interested in computational learning theory, at the least."

but children will become adults

[rebug]

Chimps will always be chimps.

Lucky bastards.

Re:but children will become adults

[SenatorOrrinHatch]

Does anyone doubt that, when genetic engineering reaches the point where we can graft human vocal chords to chimps and dolphins, some of them will be plainly more intelligent than many humans?

I am certain it will happen, I just hope its in the next 20 yeas.

Re:but children will become adults

[Meagermanx]

"I dunno. How big of a monkey?"

Language

[weierstrass]

Has it occurred to you that it's not the lack of vocal cords that prevents chimps from communicationg with us?

Re:Language

[aussie_a]

Yes,unfortunately the most likely answer is, whatever our brains have that promoted verbal communication, their brains lack. They can understand verbal communication, and are able to communicate with us by sign language (and if you claim that isn't reason of intelligence, then I've got some deaf and mute people for you to meet). The only difference between humans and chimps, is that we created the methods of communicating, they do need some help to create language (but are able to do "create words" by merging two seperate ideas in order to make up for what they may lack in their vocabulary).

I find it interesting that continuously we prove to ourselves that while apes can't reason, think or act on a human adult level, they are able to do so on a level above or equal the human child/mentally handicaped adult. And yet, we continue to deny them equal rights to children/retards. It says a lot about our society on the whole I think.

Re:Language

[JThundley]

(and if you claim that isn't reason of intelligence, then I've got some deaf and mute people for you to meet).

You've got deaf and mute people? Where do you keep them?

Re:chimps & sign language

[Anonymous Coward]

There aren't many people who have ever originated their own words. I don't recall ever creating a new word. I only repeat words that have been told to me by other people in one form or another. The only thing I do is put them in a different order. How is this any different than what the chimps did but on a much larger scale?

On the Continuing Evolution of Language

[some guy I know]

I don't recall ever creating a new word.

Any person who has not created at least one new word in his/her lifetime lacks plachoritence, IMO.
I know that that sounds entroniant, perhaps even bleavisome, but it had to be said.

Re:On the Continuing Evolution of Language

[some guy I know]

Oh, and on a slightly more serious note, how do you know that chimps haven't created new words?
Perhaps they have, and humans just haven't recognized them.
It's entirely possible that they have words for chimp concepts.
For example, they probably have a simple verb that means "to fling my excrement at".
So rather than saying/signing "I flung my excrement at the keeper this morning.", a chimp might say/sign, "I feced the keeper this morning.", where "feced" is a verb meaning "flung my excrement at".
I think that more research should be done into this area, possibly by seeing what sorts of signs/sounds/facial expressions/etc. chimps make to each other shortly after they fling their excrement at people or do other chimp things.

Re:On the Continuing Evolution of Language

[infinite9]

Any person who has not created at least one new word in his/her lifetime lacks plachoritence, IMO.
I know that that sounds entroniant, perhaps even bleavisome, but it had to be said.

I'm imbiggened by your cromulent words.

Re:chimps & sign language

[aussie_a]

the researchers were very lax about what they accepted as a sign, etc.
they of course had their own agenda to push

While research bias (either for or against chimps communicating) is a problem that is difficult to overcome in such a strong issue (for many), I have read quite a bit on the successes. I was referring to an instance where chimpanzee's (or another primate) did create words. The example I remember is "bad+dream" for nightmare.

they imitated some key words, but didn't originate their own

Humans have the "inventing words gene," while I believe other primates don't. But that isn't a bad thing (IMO), as it allows us to continue to understand them. If they did invent new words, they would have to teach us, and their ability to teach humans (they are, after all, not equal to our intelligence) could be limited.

Having said that this article [newscientist.com] says that it's quite possible bonobo's (a type of chimpanzee) do create verbal sounds for specific things, which I presume they've invented. I don't know if it is true that they are verbal "words," but it does bear more research.

However I don't see their inability to create words as them being unable to learn language. This page [tufts.edu] (it was only a quick search, info may be a bit suspect, but it seems fairly valid and jibes with what I've read in the past) has info on both success and failures. Why I like it is because it outlines those against the results proving language's opinions, as well as those opinions who are for it. One man called Herb Terrace doesn't believe the results so far are indicative of language aquisition, but merely "aping." Some of his complaints are:
* That the apes were were performing rote memorization tasks similar to pigeons who are taught to peck at colors in specific orders.

This I take issue with, because the page earlier shows an ape taking a word in one context "more" and using it in others. It isn't a simple case of "sign X always follows action Y" but instead, reasoning what sign X actually means, and applying it in other situations.

* Primates only signed in order to please their trainers, not for the personal gratification of using the signs.

I take issue with this, as many sources I've read say apes do spontaneously speak with each other. Having said that, it appears Terrace's complaints were actually made a few decades ago, and that research since then has proven him wrong. More info here [66.102.7.104]

* A primate might learn to connect a sign with food and reproduce the sign through simple conditioning, just as Pavlov's dogs were conditioned to salivate at the sound of a bell.

To be honest, is it possible to prove that human children don't speak for the same reasons? I don't think so. Think about it, when a baby is learning to speak, we heap attention and treats on them. The Pavlovian method of teaching requires this to begin with, which is then removed and the taught actions continue regardless. A problem with detractors of ape speech is that they often ask questions we can't answer when it comes to humans.

but if anyone did do some proper communicating with chimps, i don't know about it.

Unfortunately I to, do not know if anyone has. The article I linked to before, does suggest that researchers are doing their best to communicate properly with apes, but it's a hot issue for those involved. I believe current research is very indicative, but it can't silence critics yet. But I do believe it's enough (or at least enough to warrant a much more structured research program with a definitive goal of giving apes more rights) to say "y'know. Maybe we should reconsider how we treat them. Perhaps there is a better place in our society for them."

Re:chimps & sign language

[brpr]

To be honest, is it possible to prove that human children don't speak for the same reasons? I don't think so. Think about it, when a baby is learning to speak, we heap attention and treats on them.

Not really. Babies don't usually get any tangible reward simply for saying a word or two. They may get some attention, but they could get that far more effectively just by crying. Language is only really useful to a baby once it's developed to a significant extent. There are some cultures where babies are more or less ignored until they're able to keep up a decent conversation, but those babies still learn their native language just fine (despite not being rewarded for speaking to any significant extent).

Exactly what it is possible to teach bonobos is an open question -- just as it is an open question what it is possible to teach humans. The point is that human language isn't taught. You don't need to devise elaborate reward schemata to get a human baby to learn a natural language.

It seems that you don't hae kids.

[hummassa]

Babies don't usually get any tangible reward simply for saying a word or two. They may get some attention, but they could get that far more effectively just by crying. You should never do that. When a baby is starting to speak, you should ignore it most of the time it cries, and give him reward in attention when he speaks; that way, it'll develop speech faster.

Re:chimps & sign language

[brpr]

There are plenty of humans that aren't capable of learning grammar without instruction.

Erm, no. What we're talking about here is the notion of "grammar" in linguistics. This is the knowledge that people have which allows them to construct sentences, not the sort of prescriptive rules you're taught in school (don't split inifinitives, etc.) Only a small number of people with specific mental disabilities are unable to aquire the grammar of their native language.

For almost every question and "debunking"

Re:chimps & sign language

[Liam Slider]

Nobody has come up with a quantified definition of what human intelligence is, much less animal. Pretty much everything that is easy to test has been observed in animals, both in the wild and in the lab. For a long time it was tool usage, remember? And then it was creating tools, not using found objects, and now it's just "really complex tools that animals can't make".

That's because there's a bias among many humans, including a vast number of scientists, which is that humans and animals are somehow two different things. That we are somehow special, different, unique. We are just another animal. One of the smarter animals perhaps, but just another one of the many beasts on this world. We've got some neat, hyper-specialised abilities that evolution tossed our way in order to survive in this otherwise pathetic form....like not just tool-use or making (which many animals have), but tool-improving. We're also built for projectile weaponry, it's evolved into our eyesight, our reflexes, our strength level, and our complex brains which it takes to manage hunting via projectile weapon (be it spear, atlatl, bow, or firearm). And we're pack hunters....and complex hunting in a pack, using projectile weapons...you better damn sure know how to communicate with your packmates. It's nothing special about us, nothing secret....simple survival traits as applied to one animal.

The problem with the bias though, is that it causes people, including scientists, to make an assumption. That other animals cannot be almost as intelligent as we are, or think in ways that we do...or even think at all, or communicate on any meaningful level. They're just "apeing us" because they're "just dumb animals." Dolphins may be as intelligent or nearly so (or more so) as we are, but in an utterly alien way...yet you'll find few scientists with the guts to say so, even though there is a massive amount of evidence to back it up. Why? Because they are animals, of course!

Re:chimps & sign language

[inkydoo]

I seriously doubt you can point to any conclusive, scientific language studies on children that really, definitively, show what level of language development a child would develop on it's own, because such a study would be scandalously immoral and unethical.

And yet there are scandalously immoral and unethical situations that have been studied (though perhaps not scientifically, since there's no control over variables, etc.) Of most recent note is the case of Genie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie_(fe [wikipedia.org]

Re:chimps & sign language

[arkanes]

Please do not assume that because you are ignorant of such scales that they do not exist.

Such scales are defined as "anything that animals don't do is human". Genie didn't develop language and never learned, even with instruction and therapy, grammar beyond what signing chimpanzees can demonstrate, not that her case is scientific in any way.

There is no standard for measuring intelligence. There isn't even a useful scientific definition of the *word*. There are lots of attempts at categorizing and approx

Re:chimps & sign language

[inkydoo]

You point out the overgeneralization of rules (AKA overregularization, the two most common being 's' for pluralization, and use of 'ed' to indicate past tense) as proof that babies aren't paying attention to the adults trying to teach them language, but you missed one of the essential factors of this phenomenon. Before babies overapply these rules, they actually get them right. That is, in the early stages of learning, they say went instead of goed or feet instead of foots. Then, as they learn more and m

Not a coincidence ...

[hummassa]

If you don't do that, they will not start talking for many months. I know of a toddler that started talking at almost 2yo (as opposed to 8-18 months) because everytime the said "ah" and pointed to something, his parents gave it to him.

Re:Language

[masklinn]

Yeah, it's probably that they don't even consider us worth communicating with.

Re:but children will become adults

[mattwarden]

So then instead of discussing intelligent design ad nauseum, we can argue about whether humans were really given domain over all animals. Great.

Re:but children will become adults

[mrogers]

Maybe the dolphins will be intelligent enough to convince the creationists that they're full of shit.

Re:but children will become adults

[DissidentHere]

Well......they could become president.

We do have precedent now.

Re:but children will become adults

[kevmo]

The article talks about how children overimitate and chimps don't imitate. I know you were joking, but I don't think this really changes much as humans grow older. Just look at the dot-com bubble: it was pretty much causes by too many people trying to imitate a few good ideas and people just generally going nuts. Anytime anyone does anything remotely innovative, it is imitated a thousand times it seems like. Imitation is just a part of human nature, which has evidentally helped us take over this planet.

Re:but children will become adults

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

As bad as human violence is, at least I'm fairly certain none of my competitors will ever cut open my sack and squeeze my nuts out.

Then why post as an AC?

slashdot is proof

[incubusnb]

a Chimpanzee would have stopped visiting slashdot a long time ago, its a redundant step.

oh, and First Post(though i've probably failed it, i have Karma to burn so do whatever to me)

Experiment Proposal

[students]

I'd like to see another experiment done. Suppose, hypothetically, that a chimp showed a human child how to solve a puzzle, inserting unnecessary steps. Would the human skip steps more often if taught by a chimp than by another human? If so, it would show that what matters is if the species of the teacher and student are the same, not the what species the student belongs to.

Re:Experiment Proposal

[CyricZ]

The chimp would probably eat the child, just so it doesn't get stuck doing pointless experiments.

Re:Experiment Proposal

[iocat]

It would probably eat the human child because chimps are vicious [msn.com] wild animals, not the cute, cuddly animals people think they are.

Also, the fact that humans are more likely to do unnecessary steps may indicate a greater willingness on the part of humans to experiment, which is why we have computers, and keep chimps in cages, and not the other way around.

Re:Experiment Proposal

[Elminst]

do unnecessary steps may indicate a greater willingness on the part of humans to experiment,

Uhhhh what?
How does imitating unnecessary steps translate to experimenting?
Experimenting would be trying it DIFFERENT ways, which is what the CHIMPS were doing, not just rote imitation of what they were shown, which the HUMANS were doing.

Re:Experiment Proposal

[TheGavster]

I can do a task by doing A then B then C ... let's try adding D (extra step!), and see what happens. Ah, looks like the redundant steps are now A and C, saving steps over the initial solution! Prototypes of anything involve a million extra bits; the trip from concept to production is getting the extra bits out.

Re:Experiment Proposal

[dajak]

In the nineties we changed from traditional rote learning to a revolutionary discovery-based teaching method in secondary schools in the Netherlands. My professor in Cognitive Psychology was extremely skeptical about this and had his students organize learning experiments with children and students to demonstrate how badly they performed at 'discovering' anything other than a simple correlation or inverse correlation. He was right: the method turned out to be a disaster for the generation of children expose

Re:Experiment Proposal

[Nutria]

To say that chimps are viscious animals, is to say humans are viscious animals.

But people pretty much grok that humans can be pretty violent.

The delusion that needs shattering is that chimpanzees are cuddly little furballs.

Re:Experiment Proposal

[lysergic.acid]

i never claimed that chimps are completely harmless, but how many human beings do u think have been killed by chimps in the history of man? now, how many human beings have been killed by the actions of another human being in, say, the last 6 months?

sure, chimps can kill a human being, so can a rotweiller. but more people each year probably die from eating cheese burgers than they do being attacked by these animals. even animals people percieve as being vicious and predatory like alligators or bears rarely

Re:Experiment Proposal

[Wilson_6500]

How do you coax a chimp into teaching a human child? How do you coax the child into agreeing to "learn from a monkey"? Hell, how do you convince the parents?

"We'll pay your child $10 an hour to learn how to shuck corn from this chimpanzee."

That'd be one hell of a reality show.

Re:Experiment Proposal

[bleckywelcky]

I was thinking about something even better as I was reading the article. Have a chimp demonstrate the redundant process to another chimp. I was thinking that the researchers might be overlooking some cross-species assumptions they were making. Basically, if you saw another species carry out a process, I think humans are more likely to look at the goals of those actions and attempt to achieve those goals. But if you see another human carry out a process, humans are more likely to imitate since they think the

Re:Experiment Proposal

[Reziac]

I suspect what they were really measuring was the desire to please. Most kids naturally want to please adults; it's a survival mechanism. So most of the time they'll slavishly repeat what they're shown, even if they know of better methods, just to avoid getting "in trouble" (even if that "trouble" is all in the kid's head).

I did wonder how the chimps would behave if they were shown the steps by a *boss chimp* -- would they then be more likely to "do as they're told" rather than making things easier for them

A little bit biased, isn't it?

[ReformedExCon]

Human babies have a prolonged childhood. Whereas a chimpanzee may be considered an adult by age three, humans may not even reach (emotional) adulthood until well into their 30s. So it seems a little disingenuous to compare chimpanzees to human babies when the rates of growth and maturity are so different.

Re:A little bit biased, isn't it?

[ScrewMaster]

True. A more useful interspecies study would have compared human children and politicians, since politicians seem to have no grasp on cause-and-effect regardless of age.

Re:A little bit biased, isn't it?

[ozmanjusri]

politicians seem to have no grasp on cause-and-effect regardless of age.

No, that's just ordinary sociopathic behaviour. Politicians are aware of cause-and-effect, but don't have emotional reactions to the consequences.

You may be right in that being the difference between the children and the chimps though - the child's goal may have been to please the experimenter, while the chimp's goal was to get the prize

Re:A little bit biased, isn't it?

[BewireNomali]

Agreed. There are physical development issues too at that age. 3 and 4 year old humans are pretty much helpless, whereas similarly aged chimps can keep up with the pack and feed themselves and are physically prodigious in comparison. I saw some thing on young chimps, and they were given toys that similarly aged children would play with; and they tore the toys apart. Like pieces of brightly colored plastic everywhere.

I saw something recently about how chimps learn. The scientist made a point to note similari

Re:A little bit biased, isn't it?

[Tiberius_Fel]

...humans may not even reach (emotional) adulthood until well into their 30s...

My experience thus far has been that some people *never* reach emotional maturity. ;-)

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:A little bit biased, isn't it?

[hackstraw]

Contrary to popular belief, humans actually go through developmental changes over their lives, and these developments directly influence their ability to learn and reason.

A simple example that anybody can relate to is sex. Try to explain sex to a 7 or 8 year old. They don't have the hormones yet, and they simply do not "get it".

Another simple example is that humans do not "learn to walk". It happens as soon as they are strong enough and have the coordination to walk. Just like other animals. Some of wh

Re:A little bit biased, isn't it?

[Eil]

Agreed. El Wife and I got a puppy recently (at about 6 weeks old) and I started training her from day one. After only having her for about 3 weeks, she was already quite good at sitting, staying, and running up when called for. Humans, by contrast, take a couple years before they comprehend the simplest words and actions.

Re:A little bit biased, isn't it?

[zaphle]

El Wife and I got a puppy recently (at about 6 weeks old) and I started training her from day one.

I agree, you should always train your wife from day one.

Re:A little bit biased, isn't it?

[Dolly_Llama]

El Wife and I got a puppy recently

Did you....ahh..check under the hood before you married ...her?

This is nothing new...

[u-235-sentinel]

While training chimps to perform a routine task with redundant steps, the chimps were able to figure out and eliminate the redundant steps, while the human children routinely performed them despite their evident uselessness

Ever work for the Military? As much as I respect those serving you have to wonder about some of the regs they have to live by. If you've worked as a contractor (or served) then you know what I mean :-)

Re:This is nothing new...

[Doom bucket]

This should be insanely obvious to anybody.

These were adult chimpanzees, yes? And comparing them to young humans?

I'm sure if you compared young chimpanzees with young humans the results might be different.

Re:This is nothing new...

[egomaniac]

This should be insanely obvious to anybody.

These were adult chimpanzees, yes? And comparing them to young humans?

I'm sure if you compared young chimpanzees with young humans the results might be different.

The chimp in the pictures is obviously not an adult, so I would assume the comparison is fair.

So let me get this straight.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fully developed chimps beat underdeveloped humans at reasoning?

I'm shocked. Shocked!

Re:So let me get this straight.

[Spy der Mann]

I'm shocked. Shocked!

Fool! The banana is with the BLUE button! Not the RED one!

Human survival trait

[Thunderstruck]

Perhaps this is more of a survival trait in humans than a superiority in chimps. Growing up, there were a lot of things I needed to know HOW to do which were too complex for me to understand WHY at the time. Too, I emulate my parents' culture, often without a conscious reason, perhaps because their culture has allowed them to succeed.

When my windows box crashes, I reboot it, without knowing why. I could probably eliminate some steps between boot, crash, and reboot too...

Re:Human survival trait

[BewireNomali]

Right. Really good point.

I had a discussion with a friend of mine about religion. She was raised religious, and while an athiest now, she was happy to have been raised religiously. I asked why; she responded that the religious foundation answered questions she would have had (albeit falsely) about God, death, universe, etc. and thus eased her mind about them until she was mature enough to decide that it was mythology to her. In other words, she did exactly as you suggested, emulated a successful culture dynamic too complex for her to understand fully.

We all do it as humans. It's what religion is. Do this because I(tm) said so.

Good point.

Re:Human survival trait

[Barny]

I could probably eliminate some steps between boot, crash, and reboot too...

What? like running windows, if it is really working as intended, it should crash on boot, saveing all that valuable work time you could have spent so you can look at buying a new PC :)

Understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

since we teach kids process rather than critical thinking. If you want to teach your 2-year-old to tie his shoes, to you teach a series of steps to be followed, rather than an understanding of what qualities a knot must have to hold. I suppose this may be because kids can't handle critical thinking, but this test can't prove it.

Re:Understandable

[rich_r]

Less about critical thinking and more about not knowing the fundamentals. Hell, if you told me, now, the properities a shoelace knot needed to hold, I'd just look blank. The example assumes that you already have a solid grounding in knot lore.

In fact, critical thinking would only becom useful when the child is presented with a range of knots and told to choose which one would be best.

I don't think this study shows just learning.

[ebob9]

I don't think this study shows learning processes as much as the poster says it does.

I think the real key here is communication and culture. The Chimps were 'shown' how to open the box to retrieve the food. The children were also 'shown', and told that they could do whatever they thought neccicary to retreive it.

I would think that upbringing and communication would have a big impact on what the kids will do. Lots of times, when an 'adult' shows a child how to do something, they will take that as the 'correc

Previous Experience

[Muchacho_Gasolino]

It would be interesting to know how much experience the children in this study had had with some form of negative reinforcement for not following a parent/teacher/etc.'s given method exactly.

I have two children

[Luveno]

I believe this study.

This is just stupid

[drsmack1]

Why didn't they compare cats and humans? At 10 weeks kittens can already jump up on tables and wreck things - the kid is just slobbering on the floor. Does this teach us interesting things about how things learn?

No, it teaches us that there are some real morons at the university level wasting money that could be going to a WORTHY project.

This reminds me of the study a few years back when the attempted to discover why hot pizza burns the roof of your mouth.

Re:This is just stupid

[Nyph2]

heh, funny you mention why hot pizza burns your mouth. Most people assume it's the oil/cheese... but it's actually the sauce.
The specific heat of water is much higher than that of oil, which means the oil heats up quicker, but also loses its heat quicker. Top this with the insulating effect the cheese gives the sauce, and the sauce can end up staying overly hot for quite some time.
Anyhoo, im not sure quite why a study of that would be needed, but I for one find looking at it from the angle of specific hea

Re:This is just stupid

[Cyberllama]

I'm surprised at how much hostility there is towards this study. No one is saying "You're (or your kids are) stupider than a chimp!". Instead the point is, Chimps are smarter than we thought. I think the current accepted wisdom is a chimpanzee has the intelligence of a 2-3 year old, but this seems to imply that perhaps they're even a little bit smarter than that.

Re:This is just stupid

[Cyberllama]

I don't understand how you think that studying intelligence in our closest living relative is a waste of money. Chimps share 98.5% of our DNA with us; the better we understand them, the better we understand ourselves.

Why do you hate science?

[Mr.Progressive]

At 10 weeks kittens can already jump up on tables and wreck things - the kid is just slobbering on the floor.

And what's your point? This study highlighted some profound (and somewhat surprising) differences between humans and one of our closest relatives. Such differences may have some bearing on how humans evolved the ability to develop a complex, linguistic culture based on rigorous imitation. You wouldn't be against learning about evolution, would you?

I know, I know; when you say WORTHY project, you probably mean something dire like cancer or AIDS research. And I wholeheartedly agree that those are worthy projects needing generous funding. But science is science. This study adds to what we know about stuff. That's justification in and of itself. And who's to say this research won't tell us something new about mirror neurons [slashdot.org] (probably necessary for imitation) and, by extension, autism, hm?

Re:This is just stupid

[nwbvt]

I think you are missing the point of the study. It is not intended to prove which animal is smarter, chimps or humans, but rather to understand how the human mind evolved. This does pretty much establish that our brains are not simply just better than chimp brains, but rather that we have a fundementally different thought pattern. Their hypothesis is that we learn more by imitation than the chimps, and this study seems to support that.

Well?

[commodoresloat]

This reminds me of the study a few years back when the attempted to discover why hot pizza burns the roof of your mouth.

Don't leave us hangin, man; did they learn why?

Re:Well?

[onedotzero]

Hrm. Do I go for the:
+1 Funny: Because it's hot. Hot <anything> burns. It doesn't have to be pizza.

Or the:
+1 Informative/Boring: The roof of your mouth is particularly sensitive; it's part of the body's temperature monitors. It's this sensor that triggers brain freeze when you eat something cold. The sensor thinks you're far too cold, and your brain tells blood to rush to your head. The amount of blood is higher than the veins and capillaries can take, and bottlenecks. And it hurts.

Tough call...

Not sure if this is true or myth

[SmallFurryCreature]

But seem to remember something like this

That the saying a trained chimp could do this job as reffering to a boring assembly line job is in fact not true. While a monkey/ape could be trained to do simple assembly work it could not do it for the 8 hour shifts that humans can without going insane.

Sure it is nice if you can see the redundancy in your actions but it doesn't seem to allow chimps to keep growing. Childeren may be more limited then chimps but something must work better since adults are clearly su

Re:Not sure if this is true or myth

[Dr. Eggman]

That the saying a trained chimp could do this job as reffering to a boring assembly line job is in fact not true. While a monkey/ape could be trained to do simple assembly work it could not do it for the 8 hour shifts that humans can without going insane.

Thats because the human already is insane. All humans are insane, but since we control the dictionary, we get to call ourselves sane.

Interesting, but accurate?

[Martin Foster]

Could this be a certain amount of social conditioning on the matter. I had heard stories on how North-American children will form into lines naturally because they learned to do so in school, while some countries on the African continent, this is a rare occurrence. In many ways following direction is doing what is expected from a child when given direction from an adult?

I've seen fairly irrelevant procedures in many tasks that exist for safety reasons. Weapons handling in the military is certainly an

It's also proof...

[birge]

that it's cruel to experiment on monkeys. You wouldn't put a child in a cage and perform medical experiments, right? Yeah, I know it's not a perfect analogy, but I'm not sure in who's favor.

Re:It's also proof...

[rk]

Your point is well taken... but chimps aren't monkeys. They're apes.

psychology not learning

[Anonymous Coward]

Its has to do with sociopsychology- not learning.

Children are told to do things all the time- they are punished if they don't do them exactly as asked. Kids are encouraged to conform and do what they are asked.

It has very little to do with learning or the ability to think abstractly and more with whether we are discouraged from thinking abstractly by our society. If we all thought for ourselves in the US we would be in much better shape. However a good portion of people let the church do their thinking.

Socialization

[LetterRip]

I'd guess (haven't read the article - doh) that is socialization and authoritarian behavior not problem solving - the human is exhibiting socialization behavior and listening to authority - I was told to do it this way, so I'll do it how I was told.

LetterRip

Further proof

[alvinrod]

I find that this is further proof that man did not evolve from any species of ape or monkey. We deevolved.

Re:Further proof

[Dr. Eggman]

I don't believe devolved actually works in this case. Technically, evolution is not a directional process, as it is classically defined so really indicating a backwards motion to it doesn't really apply, nor would using evolution as an argument to applying a sense of greater advancement. At its root, the world evolve means to change, thus saying chimps changed in to humans would be the same concept but hold very different connotations than saying evolved.

However, if you were to use devolve as to say: "The

Authority

[koreaman]

The children did the task exactly as it was described because the scientists were authority figures and their parents trained them that way. The chimps don't give a damn.

This view of authority is, however, a double-edged sword and could be dangerous.

Imitation is flattery....

[Sashira]

I never know what scientific results to believe, so I tend to believe the ones that make sense. This theory of human learning makes a lot of sense. We tend to imitate each other even in bizarre behaviors. Remember Furbies? How 'bout our need for voting booths, because our votes may be biased by seeing someone else punch a card the same way? We often don't even think when we imitate something; people can go their whole lives without doing anything original. The human body has a lot of obsolete features

I was more excited about this when...

[radiotyler]

...I read the article title as "Chimpanzees Beat Children in Reasoning Test".

I didn't know what sort of a reasoning test involved children and simians to engage in fisticuffs, but I was all for it.

conformity?

[adrianmonk]

Maybe children do this because they have been trained to be able to conform. Or perhaps humans are even biologically better at conforming to social standards. Could be because of better impulse control or something.

As much as I, an individualist, hate to admit it, sometimes conformity can make a group function more efficiently and can be useful trait.

So perhaps this behavior shows that humans are not dumber than but instead are more socially capable than chimps.

Actually...

[millennial]

More than anything, I'd say that this shows how indoctrinated people are into following orders. When even a monkey knows that some of what it is told to do is absolutely pointless, and a human doesn't, I find that a little bit scary. Are we slowly losing our ability to think critically, is it being bred out of us, or are we just taught to ignore reason any obey?

Children get REWARDED for imitation?

[ClickOnThis]

[Disclaimer: I have no credentials in behavioural psychology, aside from what I have learned by reading and by experience as an amateur trainer and caregiver for several dogs, including two German Shepherds.]

Practically from birth, humans are conditioned to imitate each other, so perhaps it's no surprise that the children absorbed and retained the "ritual" portions of the tasks. Psychologists call it operant conditioning: when you reward a certain kind of behaviour, it tends to occur more often; if you don't, then it tends to extinguish. I wonder if chimps are more goal-oriented because their sense of reward is more focused on the final result rather than following a number of ritualized steps, at least initially. In short, perhaps young children are more conditioned to imitate, as well as being more capable of doing so.

co-wokers

[OneArmedMan]

/me : i know ppl like that /CW : what, that do wasteful repatative things like read /. /me : no , short and hairy with long arms /CW : whack ..

Follow authority

[Spazmania]

Humans are wired to follow the requirements set by the Authority. The Authority is assumed to have a reason for those steps, even if its not apparent.

The thing is, if the process was set up by an expert, the non-obvious steps often do have importance. The guy on the assembly line drills a hole where he's told because that's what he was told to do. The fact that the hole is later an anchoring point for a strut is Somebody Else's Problem.

You might say the repetition of the steps designated by Authority is th

Maria Montessori documented this 100 years ago

[michaelmalak]

Here's the briefest summary of Maria Montessori's four planes of development [aaaa.net.au] that I could find via Google. The first six years are known as the "absorbent mind". The "reasoning mind" doesn't start until the next six years (ages 6-12). The kids in TFA were ages 3-4. No big surprise they couldn't reason and abstract.

Now ask a chimp to have a vocabulary of 10,000 words.

Maria Montessori's major insight was that there are "sensitive periods" for various developments -- an age to walk, an age for toilet independence, an age to talk, an age to learn practical life skills, an age to acquire knowledge, an age to self-consciously play a role in human society, and an age to develop a profession. If a person does not learn and develop a skill during the sensitive period, that person will struggle with that skill until death.

Three and four year olds aren't ready to reason. Teach them to read, to sew, and to cook instead.

Effect may not immediately follow cause

[Dachannien]

The most interesting bit from the article (in my opinion):

As human ancestors began to make complicated tools, figuring out goals might not have been good enough anymore. Hominids needed a way to register automatically what other hominids did, even if they didn't understand the intentions behind them. They needed to imitate.

Think about it - usually, when an ape wants to obtain food, it only needs to complete a couple of steps to achieve that goal, and the reward is immediate. But with tool-using humans, it may involve sharpening a rock, cutting a big stick, jamming the rock in the end of the stick, and then hunting for food and killing it with the tool. Even if the manufacture of the spear immediately precedes hunting for the animal, the reward is still not instant, and it may even be beneficial to manufacture several spears the day before.

Children see the manufacture of these tools, and the manufacture of the spear becomes the apparent goal, not the killing of the animal. Since the benefit of each step in terms of its effect on the fitness of the tool isn't immediately apparent, it's more advantageous to imitate all of the steps until one gains the higher insight needed to modify the tool's design. There may thus have been a pressure to select for children who were good at imitation when the immediate reward was simply the completion of the task and not the reward that comes from later using the tool.

And when you think about it, nearly everything we do today (aside from fairly passive activities like watching TV, sleeping, taking a dump) doesn't have an immediate reward, yet we usually feel good about completing a task whose actual benefit isn't immediate.

A child eh? How Old?

[Spock the Baptist]

Experiments prove that Gophers are more intelligent than human fetuses...

And the point of the headline?

Re:makes sense

[Sashira]

They don't notice the extra steps? But they repeated them the first time they were shown. If you need to invent excuses like this to feel that your species is better than chimps, that's a sign of a very unhealthy and insecure view of self.

Re:What kind of kids?

[flynns]

(1) I can't disagree much with the mall part, but...

I actually -live- in a fairly isolated part of the South, and dear -god-, that is the stuff of annoying television shows. (Oh, and Alabama, but they don't count). That sort of annoyance only resides in places like Opp, Paxton, Ensley, Florala, Red Level, and Florabama.

Ever heard of 'em? Nope. It's because they still don't have cell phone service. And don't have malls.

-grumbles about people making Southerners out to be 100% backwards, useless, stupid, annoy

Re:Clarification

[Meagermanx]

The study says they're from a Scottish nursury school.

Re:This required a study?

[Meagermanx]

Actually, they're going to become extinct long before us.
So we're winning.

Humans: 1
Mother Nature: 0

Re:Chimps writing PHP code.

[iabervon]

I don't know about PHP, but imitating code including unnecessary steps works great in Python. Whenever I want to do something in Python, I start by copying some chenks of vaguely related Python code, and then modify them. I bet those chimps would start with an empty Emacs buffer and try to just write a program from scratch, and they'd have to keep looking up syntax and library calls in the manual all the time.

Re:Chimps writing PHP code.

[millennial]

<?php

$ook = new Banana.GiveMeBanana();
my $stomach = _FULL_;
my $sound = loudContentedScreech();

throwFeces(); // OOK OOK OOK AAH AAH AAH! OOK!

?>

Re:Chimps writing PHP code.

[merreborn]

It's one thing to bring post your PHP trolls on EVERY PHP thread, but do you really have to bring them to the non-PHP threads too?

Seriously man, did Rasmus Lerdorf systematically kill off every one of your remaining family members, or something?

Seriously man. These are all CyricZ PHP trolls from THIS MONTH. I skipped a good 10 that were all on the "PHP5 Recipes" thread, for sanity's sake.

• http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=171124&cid=142 52929 [slashdot.org]
  
• http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=171079&cid=142 50384 [slashdot.org]
  
• http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=170431&cid=142 35601 [slashdot.org]
  
• http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=170431&cid=142 05616 [slashdot.org]
  
• http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=170431&cid=142 04245 [slashdot.org]
  
• http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=170431&cid=142 04167 [slashdot.org]
  
• http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=170432&cid=142 03657 [slashdot.org]
  

Re:Chimps writing PHP code.

[ColaMan]

Well, if you're on a vendetta there's no point doing it half-assed I guess.

Re:Chimps writing PHP code.

[millennial]

Still not quite working.

Re:Frankly, I'm not terribly surprised...

[Soko]

MVHO is that children not only need to know the how, but the why and how that applies to them in a logical manner before they'll be interested enough to listen properly. Say to a kid "Want to learn how to make a car do the 1/4 mile in 10 seconds?" you'll get them interested (girls like powerful cars too, BTW). Next, they'll say "OK, how do I do that, NO2?", and you say "Yup, but how much NO2? Where do you inject it? Can you do that without cratering the motor? In order to master this you need to know those

Re:Wal*Mart Kids

[Sigmund Dali]

Yea, yea... "tough love", "save the rod, spoil the child.."

You guys that are saying that, you don't have the side of research on you. It may be one thing to say, "I'd beat my kid until they'd learn to be quiet," but that practice just DOESNT work. It causes a whole host of problems within the child including insecure attachment, mental scarring, and the justification of the use of aggression to solve problems. Here's a little riddle for you: Two kids are on the playground, and one of them is running around, pushing people over, hitting, kicking, etc. The other is playing in the sand with a smaller group of kids, interacting, using social skills such as sharing. Which one of these kids is the one which gets hit with a belt whenever he misbehaves? From that angle it is completely different, right?

Not to say that the mother was acting appropriately. Parenting lesson #1, use the minimal level of force needed to immediately stop misbehavior, whether this threatening time out or physically restraining the child. That does not include physical abuse. The reason this works is because of a wonderful little thing called cognitive dissonance. When you stop behavior, the child then has time to analyze what he has done and will come to the point where his opinion of himself as good contrasts with his bad actions, causing discomfort. He therefor has to relieve this. If you use violence on the child, he relieves this by a process called overjustification, and ends up devaluing the consequences of his behavior, and will continue doing it once you walk away. If you stop the behavior mildly, then the child will be forced to reevaluate his own internal mindset, and behaviorally change will result. Some of you are already saying "That will not work on a 5 year old," but it does. Children learn these things incredibly early on.

Anyway, guys, please stop this whole beating the child thing. It's not cute, it's not macho, and it's not good parental advice. There are so many ills within our society already that we don't need people going around and blatently advocating the advancement of another one.

Re:Wal*Mart Kids

[guitaristx]

Here's a little riddle for you: Two kids are on the playground, and one of them is running around, pushing people over, hitting, kicking, etc. The other is playing in the sand with a smaller group of kids, interacting, using social skills such as sharing. Which one of these kids is the one which gets hit with a belt whenever he misbehaves?

From your limited "riddle", we can't know. What we do know is that the schoolyard bully is not being disciplined effectively. Often, children don't respond the same w