Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Comprehension Of "Absence" By An African Grey Parrot: Learning With Respect To Questions Of Same/Different, Irene M. Pepperberg

Sentience Collection

An African Grey parrot, Alex, learned to report on the absence or presence of similarity and difference between two objects. Alex was shown pairs of objects that were (a) totally dissimilar, (b) identical, or (c) similar or different with respect to one of three attributes (color, shape, or material). In the first two cases, he responded to the respective queries of "What's same?" or "What's different?" with the vocalization "none," and in the third case he responded with the appropriate category label ("color," "shape," or "mah-mah" [matter]). His accuracy was 80.9% to 83.9% for pairs of familiar objects not used …