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Can Squirrel Monkeys Learn An Abna Grammar? A Re-Evaluation Of Ravignani Et Al. (2013), Stefano Ghirlanda
Can Squirrel Monkeys Learn An Abna Grammar? A Re-Evaluation Of Ravignani Et Al. (2013), Stefano Ghirlanda
Publications and Research
Ravignani et al. (2013) habituated squirrel monkeys to sound sequences conforming to an ABnA grammar (nD1;2;3), then tested them for their reactions to novel gram- matical and non-grammatical sequences. Although they conclude that the monkeys ``consistently recognized and generalized the sequence ABnA,'' I remark that this conclusion is not robust. The statistical significance of results depends on specific choices of data analysis, namely dichotomization of the response variable and omission of specific data points. Additionally, there is little evidence of generalization to novel patterns (n D 4;5), which is important to conclude that the monkeys recognized the ABnA grammar beyond …
Memory For Stimulus Sequences: A Divide Between Humans And Other Animals?, Ghirlanda Stefano, Johan Lind, Magnus Enquist
Memory For Stimulus Sequences: A Divide Between Humans And Other Animals?, Ghirlanda Stefano, Johan Lind, Magnus Enquist
Publications and Research
Humans stand out among animals for their unique capacities in domains such as language, culture and imitation, yet it has been difficult to identify cognitive elements that are specifically human. Most research has focused on how information is processed after it is acquired, e.g. in problem solving or ‘insight’ tasks, but we may also look for species differences in the initial acquisition and coding of information. Here, we show that non-human species have only a limited capacity to discriminate ordered sequences of stimuli. Collating data from 108 experiments on stimulus sequence discrimination (1540 data points from 14 bird and mammal …