Baboons can learn reading skills

[Jeff]

Findings may indicate pre-existing capacity in brain
The Associated Press
Posted: Apr 12, 2012 2:52 PM ET


Dan the baboon sits in front of a computer screen. The letters BRRU pop up. With a quick and almost dismissive tap, the monkey signals it's not a word. Correct. Next comes, ITCS. Again, not a word. Finally KITE comes up.

He pauses and hits a green oval to show it's a word. In the space of just a few seconds, Dan has demonstrated a mastery of what some experts say is a form of pre-reading and walks away rewarded with a treat of dried wheat.

Dan is part of new research that shows baboons are able to pick up the first step in reading — identifying recurring patterns and determining which four-letter combinations are words and which are just gobbledygook.

The study shows that reading's early steps are far more instinctive than scientists first thought and it also indicates that non-human primates may be smarter than we give them credit for.

"They've got the hang of this thing," said Jonathan Grainger, a French scientist and lead author of the research.

Baboons and other monkeys are good pattern finders and what they are doing may be what we first do in recognizing words.

It's still a far cry from real reading. They don't understand what these words mean, and are just breaking them down into parts, said Grainger, a cognitive psychologist at the Aix-Marseille University in France.

In 300,000 tests, the six baboons distinguished between real and fake words about three-out-of-four times, according to the study published in Thursday's journal Science.

...

[wintler2]

Reading is a binge of symbolic cognition, i love it myself but its not real. What if the contemporary human mania for merely symbolic renderings of the world (reading, tv, web..) is basic to our dysfunctional relationship with the material biosphere that grew us? There are no lies without abstraction, no abstraction without symbols and labels. IOW, is teaching baboons to read really giving them a mental illness?

[Nordic]

I think we should come up with a label to describe this.

[wintler2]

I think we should come up with a label to describe this.

Thats what we do, label/fit it in to or out of our worldview, then can pretend we understand, and go back to sleep. A creature less inclined to labels and abstraction is correspondingly more aware of whats going down here and now, imho. It may not seem an advantage if you're locked in a cage, but it does increase ones chance of getting out of the cage.
Its a reasonable guess that baboons do have their own abstractions, just as we humans do still 'hear' by direct experience (without abstraction) some of the time, but we're way out of balance, deluged in symbols pushed by a delusional civilisation and marginalising our bodies (locus of most direct experience) every which way. I'm don't think animal illiteracy is the problem.
(genuine spelling error left for lulz)

[Canadian_watcher]

Bah. Barracuda proved this ages ago.

[Searcher08]

Welcome back!

Bah. Barracuda proved this ages ago.

[DrEvil]

I just realized I have access to Science through my university, so if anyone wants the full text (no links or images), pm me

[MacCruiskeen]

Reading is a binge of symbolic cognition, i love it myself but its not real. What if the contemporary human mania for merely symbolic renderings of the world (reading, tv, web..) is basic to our dysfunctional relationship with the material biosphere that grew us? There are no lies without abstraction, no abstraction without symbols and labels. IOW, is teaching baboons to read really giving them a mental illness?

This is brilliant, and it opens a big can of worms. You're probably familiar with John Zerzan, a green anarchist whose rejection of modernity is bracing, to say the least. He identifies the Fall of mankind with the emergence of language itself, which was "a binge of symbolic cognition" that preceded even reading by several hundred millennia.

[brainpanhandler]

delete

[wintler2]

..
This is brilliant, and it opens a big can of worms. You're probably familiar with John Zerzan, a green anarchist whose rejection of modernity is bracing, to say the least. He identifies the Fall of mankind with the emergence of language itself, which was "a binge of symbolic cognition" that preceded even reading by several hundred millennia.

I prob picked up idea from Zerzan or someone like, but i'm cautious about primitivism, which seems idealised and simplistic. For us here now, going off symbols altogether is not an option, but theres no need for binary choice, one can alternate between them as appropriate. First we need to remember that it is even possible to not abstract and distance ourselves from the world and ourselves.

[General Patton]

..
This is brilliant, and it opens a big can of worms. You're probably familiar with John Zerzan, a green anarchist whose rejection of modernity is bracing, to say the least. He identifies the Fall of mankind with the emergence of language itself, which was "a binge of symbolic cognition" that preceded even reading by several hundred millennia.

I prob picked up idea from Zerzan or someone like, but i'm cautious about primitivism, which seems idealised and simplistic. For us here now, going off symbols altogether is not an option, but theres no need for binary choice, one can alternate between them as appropriate. First we need to remember that it is even possible to not abstract and distance ourselves from the world and ourselves.

The bands that symbols are communicated from one human being to another is typically too underdeveloped to be useful. At best you can get a simple sentence or idea through, the rest slips into the unconscious. Good for creating a large movement of simpletons, bad for technical training.

This is the problem with LSD and psychedelics in general, any metacognition that is performed ends up being done by the subconscious. It's equivalent to looking through a hole in a wall when you need to tear the whole wall down altogether. Even after the transfer of the symbol takes place, the subconscious can disregard data because it has no model to compare it too or mis-categorize it to something it feels is similar.

The problem isn't language or symbols strictly speaking, it's humans lack of perception. Perception itself is a tricky concept...

Edit: If you cut out abstract thinking you will live entirely in the moment. No more past/future oriented thinking. No more mathematics. No ability to understand any form of truth beyond the ones that your senses feed to you right now. Being in the moment does not equal being outside of time, by it's very definition. Do you believe that truth exists outside of time?

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

In US CIA-media the picture of the baboon was juxtaposed with Obama. Just for the haters.

[Marie Laveau]

Reading is a binge of symbolic cognition, i love it myself but its not real. What if the contemporary human mania for merely symbolic renderings of the world (reading, tv, web..) is basic to our dysfunctional relationship with the material biosphere that grew us? There are no lies without abstraction, no abstraction without symbols and labels. IOW, is teaching baboons to read really giving them a mental illness?

^

This right here. Excellent.

I've mentioned this book: 'The Alphabet and the Goddess'

Can't recommend it enough. The symbols that we believe give meaning to our lives, that we believe make us greater than the great apes (other than we) - indeed, that make us greater than "illiterate" peoples....oh, what folly is man.

Humans are the dumbest animals.

[wintler2]

..I've mentioned this book: 'The Alphabet and the Goddess'
Can't recommend it enough. The symbols that we believe give meaning to our lives, that we believe make us greater than the great apes (other than we) - indeed, that make us greater than "illiterate" peoples....oh, what folly is man.
Humans are the dumbest animals.

Thanks for ref..

..Shlain argues that literacy reinforced the brain's linear, abstract, predominantly masculine left hemisphere at the expense of the holistic, iconic feminine right one. ..

Shlain goes on to describe the colossal shift he calls the Iconic Revolution, that began in the 19th century. The invention of photography and the discovery of electromagnetism combined to bring us film, television, computers, and graphic advertising; all of which are based on images. Shlain foresees that increasing reliance on right brain pattern recognition instead of left brain linear sequence will move culture toward equilibrium between the two hemispheres, between masculine and feminine, between word and image. ..
http://www.alphabetvsgoddess.com/

Have to read that one. My bias is against it as suspiciously simple, but just the website blurb gave me a flood of relationship flashbacks!

[Marie Laveau]

Oh, I wouldn't call it a litmus; simply because humans, as I said, are stupid and we're discovering more and more every day.

But it, as with 'Ishmael', certainly gives one pause in assuming humans are the pinnacle of evolution and everything we do is brilliant.

It's been a number of years since I re-read it, but I remember thinking, again: "Ah, yes, this is where we went wrong."

And I did disagree that electronic media may bring us into balance. However, what do I know? Maybe it will.