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The Alex Studies: Cognitive and Communicative Abilities of Grey Parrots
Can a parrot understand complex concepts and mean what it says? Since the early 1900s, most studies on animal-human communication have focused on great apes and a few cetacean species. Birds were rarely used in similar studies on the grounds that they were merely talented mimics--that they were, after all, "birdbrains." Experiments performed primarily on pigeons in Skinner boxes demonstrated capacities inferior to those of mammals; these results were thought to reflect the capacities of all birds, despite evidence suggesting that species such as jays, crows, and parrots might be capable of more impressive cognitive feats.
Twenty years ago Irene Pepperberg set out to discover whether the results of the pigeon studies necessarily meant that other birds--particularly the large-brained, highly social parrots--were incapable of mastering complex cognitive concepts and the rudiments of referential speech. Her investigation and the bird at its center--a male Grey parrot named Alex--have since become almost as well known as their primate equivalents and no less a subject of fierce debate in the field of animal cognition. This book represents the long-awaited synthesis of the studies constituting one of the landmark experiments in modern comparative psychology.
Twenty years ago Irene Pepperberg set out to discover whether the results of the pigeon studies necessarily meant that other birds--particularly the large-brained, highly social parrots--were incapable of mastering complex cognitive concepts and the rudiments of referential speech. Her investigation and the bird at its center--a male Grey parrot named Alex--have since become almost as well known as their primate equivalents and no less a subject of fierce debate in the field of animal cognition. This book represents the long-awaited synthesis of the studies constituting one of the landmark experiments in modern comparative psychology.
448 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
March 1, 2016
This is an extremely academic book, deep, readable but not really entertaining. The other book Dr Pepperberg wrote, Alex & Me: How a Scientist and a Parrot Discovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence--and Formed a Deep Bond in the Process, when Alex died a few years ago is exactly the opposite, very entertaining but not enough rigorous scientific research. Maybe one day there will be one in the middle!
March 26, 2019
This review is mostly of The Alex Studies: Cognitive and Communicative Abilities of Grey Parrots (2000), but it also includes a few comments on Dr. Pepperberg's other book on the same topic: Alex and Me: How a Scientist and a Parrot Discovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence and Formed a Deep Bond in the Process (2008). I initially planned to only read 1 of the books, but this one seemed somewhat too academic for a casual reader like myself (The Alex Studies) and the other (Alex and Me) seemed a bit too emotive for me. I wasn't really sure which one to go for and ended up reading them both to satisfy my curiosity about how successful the author's approach of splitting the emotional story from the scientific research would be at solving a dilemma that I think many science authors face: appealing to both casual readers of popular science and the scientific community, as well as everyone in between (the result of which is usually a messy, incoherent book that doesn't really end up fulfilling any audience's expectations).
Admittedly, I paid much more attention to this book and only gave the other a quick read since I had little patience for a personal, “poignant love story” (according to the Goodreads description) between a scientist/researcher and her Grey parrot subject (Avian Learning EXperiment, “Alex”) written after (and perhaps prompted by) the subject's premature death. Perhaps my 1 star rating of the emotional book (Alex and Me) and my initial 4 star rating of this one shows that the division of the two elements of the story was in fact a wise approach (whether it was intentional or not, since we can't assume that the author already knew while writing the first book that she would eventually write a second more emotive one later on). Reading the two books, I was curious to see just how clean of a split there would be between the emotive and scientific sides of the author in each book, and whether or not the different sides would find ways of infiltrating the other and encroaching onto the territory of the opposite book.
As it turns out, these “encroachments” were not as obvious as I thought they would be. There were actually no obvious indications of the author's highly emotive subjectivity in The Alex Studies, and likewise very little evidence of the actual level of rigorousness of the objective science in Alex and Me (the reader is obviously told about the author's research, but one wouldn't necessarily get the impression that it was anything as serious as it actually was). Instead, (particularly towards the end of this book) I noticed some disappointing consistent underlying attitudes that managed to find a way to covertly seep into each book which ultimately unified the emotive and scientific sides that the author tried to separate, and lowered my initial rating of this book from a 4 to a 3 – but I'll get to those at the end of this review.
First: The Alex Studies. As a layperson reading a book that was more geared towards other researchers to scrutinize, critique and/or incorporate into further research, a good 50% of it was admittedly somewhat cumbersome to get through – I don't count this as a fault though since in a book like this all the details of the methodologies, training and experiments (along with a lot of the research data) were as necessary as they were tiresome to read. That being said, the author's apparent (and completely understandable) concern for academic acceptance also meant that apart from all the details of the actual research, we're also given some information about the scientific frameworks that the research is supposed to fit into and this is where it became a little bit too much for me.
So for example we have a few pages of the author explaining the different meanings of the word “referential” in different disciplines and what definition she opted for and why, and explanations of things like “Categorical Class Formation versus Stimulus Generalization” (when determining the mechanisms Alex might have used to produce the correct answers for questions dealing with the categories “colour”, “shape”, etc.), or “Subitizing versus Counting” (when determining what mechanisms Alex might have used to produce the correct answers to numerical questions and whether or not this could be classified as “counting” as we know it), or “denotive symbols” versus “indexical signs” (when examining the “intentionality” of Alex's behaviour and whether or not his “requests” could actually be classified as such), etc.
On the one hand I understand the necessity for all the classifications, not only to properly understand and appreciate the complexity of the experiments and their results, but also in order to incorporate the research into future work, to evaluate the results and to compare them to past/future research, etc. On the other hand, all the classifications often just seem like philosophical semantic games (and perhaps even power games to some extent) being played out on a scientific arena. At many points in the book it felt like the author wasn't just choosing her words carefully but was also making preemptive strikes on a battlefield in which one has to play by the rules or risk their work being labeled as anthropomorphic. Of course I understand how problematic and damaging anthropomorphism can be to scientific research, but I think when the fear of the label descends into a sort of paranoid frenzy of philosophical semantics, it just becomes a bit ridiculous.
All that being said, I really did appreciate and enjoy the author's level headed, scientific approach to all the questions posed in the book (both the answerable and unanswerable ones), as well as her organised, systematic and cohesive presentation of the research, which even for a lay reader like myself, was relatively easy to read and understand. Not to mention of course the fascinating results of the experiments described. The most interesting thing for me wasn't so much the birds' (a few other birds were used in some of the experiments too) abilities to produce human language (which on its own could simply be mimicry) or even their cognitive capabilities that allowed them to perform certain tasks (which they perform different versions of in the wild anyway in order to survive), but more their ability to assign meanings to human words and to use them to communicate their already existing cognitive abilities in human code/language in what the author showed to be a meaningful way – which really just opens Pandora's box on the extent of animal “consciousness” and sentience (not the existence of it, which for me personally is not question).
The author's statement on why exactly Grey parrots possess such capabilities leads me into my issues connecting the two books:
I wonder if this “propensity” also relates to her reluctance to talk about the cause of death of the Avian Learning EXperiment, who, according to the author herself, died a whole “two decades before the end of his expected life span”. One assumes that when an autopsy is performed (and we're told one definitely was) there are some results, no matter how inconclusive, and yet the results are not even alluded to in the book – I can't imagine that the author really didn't think that a reader might be curious about this information. So is this the author, once again being “hesitant” to speculate about the different possible causes of death because of her “propensity to propose testable hypotheses”? Did she see “few ways of designing appropriately rigorous tests of any possible theory” in this case too? If that's the desired implication of her refusal to address the possible causes of death, then it's an extremely manipulative one. Under the guise of scientific rigorousness, the author gives the impression that it's impossible to test or make any reliable statistics about the causes of premature deaths, or even supposedly “unexplained” deaths and the extents to which they happen in captive versus wild Grey parrots – which of course is not the case (even if we take into account the dangers faced in the wild).
In an interview for Nation Public Radio in 2009 (https://www.npr.org/templates/transcr...) the author says:
Of course these things do happen, but there is absolutely no mention of even the tiniest of possibilities that such an unnatural way of life (no matter how “healthy”) could have negatively impacted the bird and might have lead to his premature death. I would perhaps understand it if the author didn't want to make any speculations if this was an academic book, but in a book that appears to be designed to tug at the heart strings and that is overflowing with emotion and talk about our “oneness with nature”, I found it odd that the author wouldn't even consider this possibility. She says in Alex and Me: “I took care of Alex, as any dutiful Grey owner would, but he was such a free spirit that I never felt I owned him” - the fact is that she did own him and was in fact responsible for him, no matter how deep we get into all the spiritual woo-woo in order to avoid any responsibility.
Reading these two books, along with Manual of Parrot Behaviour (by Andrew Luescher), rather than filling me with optimism that the data could be used, as the author hopes, to: “better the life of even a single captive parrot, prevent habitat destruction and capture of birds in the wild”, instead fills me with dread. The way I see it:
1) Just because certain birds can do certain things, does that mean they do do them? Does that mean they “want” to do them? Or even should? The implication in the author's quote above is that every captive parrot is just waiting for his “self-realisation”/“self-fulfillment” as a talking bird who lives to demonstrate his cognitive abilities in human code.
2) Habitat destruction doesn't happen because people don't believe in animal cognitive abilities or sentience.
3) The capture of birds in the wild doesn't happen because people don't believe in animal cognitive abilities or sentience either.
I might have thought that the naivety of the above quote from this book, The Alex Studies, was simply a result of either personal or societal pressures on researchers to profess grandiose hopes for “saving the planet/animals” in order for their work to be deemed as “meaningful”, had it not been for another quote in her other book, Alex and Me:
I thought the fact that the “favourite film” the author chose to bring up in the book was “Out of Africa” said a lot. The film is based on Isak Dinesen's (a pen name for Karen Dinesen Blixen) loosely autobiographical book and is about a Dutch baroness who lives on her coffee plantation in colonial British East Africa, now Kenya. The above 2 quotes from the 2 books, when taken together, reflect a certain condescending arrogance that I think is not only incredibly jejune but also extremely harmful.
The author claims that “For far too long animals […] have been denigrated and treated merely as creatures of instinct rather than as sentient beings” - but the way I see it, the problem here isn't a question of animals being “sentient beings” but rather of humans being “creatures of instinct”. But I guess that's not the “recognition of oneness” that the author is looking for. So yes, the research is interesting, and very important indeed, but let's be honest, it's not what's going to “save the animals”.
Admittedly, I paid much more attention to this book and only gave the other a quick read since I had little patience for a personal, “poignant love story” (according to the Goodreads description) between a scientist/researcher and her Grey parrot subject (Avian Learning EXperiment, “Alex”) written after (and perhaps prompted by) the subject's premature death. Perhaps my 1 star rating of the emotional book (Alex and Me) and my initial 4 star rating of this one shows that the division of the two elements of the story was in fact a wise approach (whether it was intentional or not, since we can't assume that the author already knew while writing the first book that she would eventually write a second more emotive one later on). Reading the two books, I was curious to see just how clean of a split there would be between the emotive and scientific sides of the author in each book, and whether or not the different sides would find ways of infiltrating the other and encroaching onto the territory of the opposite book.
As it turns out, these “encroachments” were not as obvious as I thought they would be. There were actually no obvious indications of the author's highly emotive subjectivity in The Alex Studies, and likewise very little evidence of the actual level of rigorousness of the objective science in Alex and Me (the reader is obviously told about the author's research, but one wouldn't necessarily get the impression that it was anything as serious as it actually was). Instead, (particularly towards the end of this book) I noticed some disappointing consistent underlying attitudes that managed to find a way to covertly seep into each book which ultimately unified the emotive and scientific sides that the author tried to separate, and lowered my initial rating of this book from a 4 to a 3 – but I'll get to those at the end of this review.
First: The Alex Studies. As a layperson reading a book that was more geared towards other researchers to scrutinize, critique and/or incorporate into further research, a good 50% of it was admittedly somewhat cumbersome to get through – I don't count this as a fault though since in a book like this all the details of the methodologies, training and experiments (along with a lot of the research data) were as necessary as they were tiresome to read. That being said, the author's apparent (and completely understandable) concern for academic acceptance also meant that apart from all the details of the actual research, we're also given some information about the scientific frameworks that the research is supposed to fit into and this is where it became a little bit too much for me.
So for example we have a few pages of the author explaining the different meanings of the word “referential” in different disciplines and what definition she opted for and why, and explanations of things like “Categorical Class Formation versus Stimulus Generalization” (when determining the mechanisms Alex might have used to produce the correct answers for questions dealing with the categories “colour”, “shape”, etc.), or “Subitizing versus Counting” (when determining what mechanisms Alex might have used to produce the correct answers to numerical questions and whether or not this could be classified as “counting” as we know it), or “denotive symbols” versus “indexical signs” (when examining the “intentionality” of Alex's behaviour and whether or not his “requests” could actually be classified as such), etc.
On the one hand I understand the necessity for all the classifications, not only to properly understand and appreciate the complexity of the experiments and their results, but also in order to incorporate the research into future work, to evaluate the results and to compare them to past/future research, etc. On the other hand, all the classifications often just seem like philosophical semantic games (and perhaps even power games to some extent) being played out on a scientific arena. At many points in the book it felt like the author wasn't just choosing her words carefully but was also making preemptive strikes on a battlefield in which one has to play by the rules or risk their work being labeled as anthropomorphic. Of course I understand how problematic and damaging anthropomorphism can be to scientific research, but I think when the fear of the label descends into a sort of paranoid frenzy of philosophical semantics, it just becomes a bit ridiculous.
All that being said, I really did appreciate and enjoy the author's level headed, scientific approach to all the questions posed in the book (both the answerable and unanswerable ones), as well as her organised, systematic and cohesive presentation of the research, which even for a lay reader like myself, was relatively easy to read and understand. Not to mention of course the fascinating results of the experiments described. The most interesting thing for me wasn't so much the birds' (a few other birds were used in some of the experiments too) abilities to produce human language (which on its own could simply be mimicry) or even their cognitive capabilities that allowed them to perform certain tasks (which they perform different versions of in the wild anyway in order to survive), but more their ability to assign meanings to human words and to use them to communicate their already existing cognitive abilities in human code/language in what the author showed to be a meaningful way – which really just opens Pandora's box on the extent of animal “consciousness” and sentience (not the existence of it, which for me personally is not question).
The author's statement on why exactly Grey parrots possess such capabilities leads me into my issues connecting the two books:
“I have suggested that a parrot’s capacity to learn what I teach in the laboratory must be based on an existent cognitive architecture, but have not intimated why this cognitive architecture should exist—or, from an evolutionary standpoint, what selection pressures may have shaped such an architecture and hence Grey parrot behavior. Such hesitancy comes from my propensity to propose testable hypotheses rather than exciting theories and, at present, I see few ways of designing appropriately rigorous tests of any possible theory.”
I wonder if this “propensity” also relates to her reluctance to talk about the cause of death of the Avian Learning EXperiment, who, according to the author herself, died a whole “two decades before the end of his expected life span”. One assumes that when an autopsy is performed (and we're told one definitely was) there are some results, no matter how inconclusive, and yet the results are not even alluded to in the book – I can't imagine that the author really didn't think that a reader might be curious about this information. So is this the author, once again being “hesitant” to speculate about the different possible causes of death because of her “propensity to propose testable hypotheses”? Did she see “few ways of designing appropriately rigorous tests of any possible theory” in this case too? If that's the desired implication of her refusal to address the possible causes of death, then it's an extremely manipulative one. Under the guise of scientific rigorousness, the author gives the impression that it's impossible to test or make any reliable statistics about the causes of premature deaths, or even supposedly “unexplained” deaths and the extents to which they happen in captive versus wild Grey parrots – which of course is not the case (even if we take into account the dangers faced in the wild).
In an interview for Nation Public Radio in 2009 (https://www.npr.org/templates/transcr...) the author says:
“The autopsy did not show a lot. By sort of subtraction, my veterinarian assumed that it was heart arrhythmia because there was nothing obvious. And he did have a little bit of arteriosclerosis, which meant that if there was a heart arrhythmia, things could've shut down, and it could've happened very quickly. And certainly, you know, we gave him the best foods and healthy foods, and he had just had a checkup the week before. I mean, it was just like the middle-aged guy who goes to his doctor, and the doctor does all the tests and says, hey, you're great. You'll live another 30 years. And the guy walks out the door and, you know, collapses. And that's sort of what happened.”
Of course these things do happen, but there is absolutely no mention of even the tiniest of possibilities that such an unnatural way of life (no matter how “healthy”) could have negatively impacted the bird and might have lead to his premature death. I would perhaps understand it if the author didn't want to make any speculations if this was an academic book, but in a book that appears to be designed to tug at the heart strings and that is overflowing with emotion and talk about our “oneness with nature”, I found it odd that the author wouldn't even consider this possibility. She says in Alex and Me: “I took care of Alex, as any dutiful Grey owner would, but he was such a free spirit that I never felt I owned him” - the fact is that she did own him and was in fact responsible for him, no matter how deep we get into all the spiritual woo-woo in order to avoid any responsibility.
Reading these two books, along with Manual of Parrot Behaviour (by Andrew Luescher), rather than filling me with optimism that the data could be used, as the author hopes, to: “better the life of even a single captive parrot, prevent habitat destruction and capture of birds in the wild”, instead fills me with dread. The way I see it:
1) Just because certain birds can do certain things, does that mean they do do them? Does that mean they “want” to do them? Or even should? The implication in the author's quote above is that every captive parrot is just waiting for his “self-realisation”/“self-fulfillment” as a talking bird who lives to demonstrate his cognitive abilities in human code.
2) Habitat destruction doesn't happen because people don't believe in animal cognitive abilities or sentience.
3) The capture of birds in the wild doesn't happen because people don't believe in animal cognitive abilities or sentience either.
I might have thought that the naivety of the above quote from this book, The Alex Studies, was simply a result of either personal or societal pressures on researchers to profess grandiose hopes for “saving the planet/animals” in order for their work to be deemed as “meaningful”, had it not been for another quote in her other book, Alex and Me:
“ He [Alex] did leave me this great gift of what was once known and embraced but was lost: the oneness of nature and our part in it. […]. This feeling is best expressed in one of my favorite films, Out of Africa. […] The book opens with the simple and yet deeply evocative phrase, “I had a farm in Africa.” […] It’s difficult to explain, but when you go to Africa, the place gets under your skin, burrows into your soul. And so that simplest of opening lines instantly taps into the most fundamental of emotions. It also stirs a deep sorrow that comes from knowing the devastation that is now being visited upon much of these primal lands, victim of the double depredation of limitless greed and desperate need. Sad. Where’s the recognition of oneness here? One attraction of the story for me involves a certain identification with this woman and her quest in life.”
I thought the fact that the “favourite film” the author chose to bring up in the book was “Out of Africa” said a lot. The film is based on Isak Dinesen's (a pen name for Karen Dinesen Blixen) loosely autobiographical book and is about a Dutch baroness who lives on her coffee plantation in colonial British East Africa, now Kenya. The above 2 quotes from the 2 books, when taken together, reflect a certain condescending arrogance that I think is not only incredibly jejune but also extremely harmful.
The author claims that “For far too long animals […] have been denigrated and treated merely as creatures of instinct rather than as sentient beings” - but the way I see it, the problem here isn't a question of animals being “sentient beings” but rather of humans being “creatures of instinct”. But I guess that's not the “recognition of oneness” that the author is looking for. So yes, the research is interesting, and very important indeed, but let's be honest, it's not what's going to “save the animals”.
July 28, 2013
Tgift, really fun but dense book about Alex the parrot and the codes he learnt to communicate with humans. It was written while he was still alive, so it's not fully up to date. The writing is also quite dense, using lots of psychological ideas and terminology, although Pepperberg explains these as she goes.
I might have preferred a more anecdotal book, but I loved how authoritative the book could be. The experiments Alex participated in seem to show at a fundamental level that non-mammal species can learn advanced cognitive processes and even the codes of language. Language is the subject of most of the book. Alex's language was intentional, referential and creative. He could count and knew the difference between different colours, matters and sizes. He even knew which qualities were colours and which were matters, e.g. - he knew that blue and green are colours, but metal and hide were matters, and that these are different kinds of quality.
Pepperberg compares Alex's abilities to those of children at various levels, but also to the great apes and dolphins. The book is sufficiently technical that in the introductions to each of the sections you barely go a sentence without a citation. That was actually another really great part of the book for me, Pepperberg obviously knows cognitive psychology really well, and since she starts with the basics each time I got a real overview of cognitive psychological theory.
The only trouble with the book is it was a bit dense. There were parts I hardly understood, and subtle distinctions which I think escaped me. I expect I'm not the target audience for the book though, so that's okay.
Four quotes, summing up the best parts:
{Piaget’s cognitive development conservation tests on birds}
Fred, the macaw, was most cooperative; he was fully flighted and flew to the test site when experimenters entered his house. He provided an arresting interruption during Task 13: Rather than repeat the task, he flew from the test site to the floor to search beneath the coffee table, where he had seen his owner place a seed cup before testing began.
...
When Griffin was 33 weeks old, his food preferences stabilized, so we could test this possibility [whether he would be surprised when his favourite snack was switched]. On his first trial, we presented a cashew (a favored item) but hid a less desired Bird Diet nugget during a successive invisible displacement. Griffin upended the final box and stared at the pellet. He immediately turned over the other boxes, then ran to the experimenters. He repeated this behavior on a trial with a different box as the final hiding place. We then replicated the procedure without substitution; Griffin uncovered and ate the cashew without continuing his search.
Before testing Alex, we reacquainted him with the procedures because he had not had such tasks in several years. On a standard Task 14 trial, he promptly chose the last screen and obtained a cashew. We then administered Task 16: After upending the box and finding a pellet, Alex turned from the apparatus to the experimenters, narrowing his eyes to slits, a behavior we have come to interpret as "anger."' To ensure cooperation on the next trial, we gave him the expected nut. His reaction to finding a pellet on the final trial was similar to his reaction on the first, except that he banged his beak on the table-another sign of frustration or displeasure.
{true referent language vs conceptual or operant association}
I had two reasons for teaching "want" and for studying how Alex acquired and used the term. First, I needed to determine whether, when he incorrectly identified objects with labels for more favored items, he was attempting to obtain treats rather than making errors (see Chapter 3). Specifically, if I could separate requests from errors, I would have a better indication of Alex's labeling capacity (Premack 1976). Second, I wanted to determine the extent of his communicative competence-a term generally defined as the ability to convey intent and to respond to the intent of others (Fay and Schuler 1980; see Smith 1991 for a discussion in terms of information processing). Could Alex convey his wants and needs by means of what to him was an artificial communication system? Given that his most frequent identification errors involved labels for treats (e.g., foods not freely available, such as nuts) or items with which he generally interacted for extended periods of time (e.g., corks he chewed to shreds), his behavior suggested some level of intent and thus communicative competence. Also, he would often toss an object he had identified and received from a trainer and immediately produce the label for a more favored object or food. Alex thus seemed a good subject for studying whether a nonhuman might use "want" in a referential, intentional way.
...
I also suggest that some spontaneous combinations of signing chimpanzees-such as use of "water-bird" on the appearance of a swan (Fouts and Rigby 1977)-fit into the contextual/
conceptual category. The chimpanzee has some concept of what constitutes a bird (wings, beak, etc.), of what constitutes water (wetness, etc.), and the context (interaction with humans) in which labeling occurs. Without further information about how such a term is used, however, we cannot designate it as referential.
{Linguistic creativity}
One incident, involving his response to apples, nevertheless suggests that Alex has some capacity for intentional creativity (Pepperberg 1990c). We were examining the effect of another parrot's presence during training and were limited to using a colleague's pet-one that did not talk and would attend only if we used her favorite food, apples. We thus made an exception to our rule against training food labels, and in fall 1984 began training "apple." At that time Alex already used the labels "banana," "cherry," and "grape." During formal sessions, he began to produce a /p/. At the end of the season for fresh apples, he refused these fruits, and his vocalizations remained at this level. We thus removed apples from training and the laboratory. Apples were reintroduced in the spring, were eaten, and /p/ reappeared in the first training session. During the second week of training, however, Alex looked at the fruit, said, "Banerry ... I want banerry," and snatched a bite. He not only persistently identified the fruit as "banerry" in subsequent sessions, but also slowed production and sharpened his elocution ("ban-err-eeee"), much as trainers do when teaching a new label (Pepperberg 1990c).
{Fun anecdotes}
My students and I have also successfully mapped many of Alex's requests for information (Pepperberg 1990c). Thus whether or not his queries "What's that?" "What color?" and so forth, are intentional, we treat them as such. Although Alex repeatedly asked about the shape of wooden plant stakes ("long" wood), round objects ("no-corner"), or the label for the board above his gym ("shelf'), he never acquired the appropriate labels. He did, however, learn "grey" by querying a student about the color of his reflection in a mirror (Pepperberg 1983b), and began uttering "rock" after querying us about a lava-stone beak conditioner he repeatedly tossed from the top of his cage. We answered his query ("What's that?") about covers in the Piagetian object permanence study (Chapter 10) with "box"; he produced "bock" (Pepperberg and Kozak 1986). "Bock" and "box" are now used interchangeably to label square or rectangular containers. After asking about the vegetable we were eating and its color, he began to ask for "carrot" and acquired functional use of that label and of "orange." He identified novel "grey" and "orange" objects, on first trials, without subsequent training (Pepperberg 1990c); few errors were made on later identifications (Table 13.2).6
I might have preferred a more anecdotal book, but I loved how authoritative the book could be. The experiments Alex participated in seem to show at a fundamental level that non-mammal species can learn advanced cognitive processes and even the codes of language. Language is the subject of most of the book. Alex's language was intentional, referential and creative. He could count and knew the difference between different colours, matters and sizes. He even knew which qualities were colours and which were matters, e.g. - he knew that blue and green are colours, but metal and hide were matters, and that these are different kinds of quality.
Pepperberg compares Alex's abilities to those of children at various levels, but also to the great apes and dolphins. The book is sufficiently technical that in the introductions to each of the sections you barely go a sentence without a citation. That was actually another really great part of the book for me, Pepperberg obviously knows cognitive psychology really well, and since she starts with the basics each time I got a real overview of cognitive psychological theory.
The only trouble with the book is it was a bit dense. There were parts I hardly understood, and subtle distinctions which I think escaped me. I expect I'm not the target audience for the book though, so that's okay.
Four quotes, summing up the best parts:
{Piaget’s cognitive development conservation tests on birds}
Fred, the macaw, was most cooperative; he was fully flighted and flew to the test site when experimenters entered his house. He provided an arresting interruption during Task 13: Rather than repeat the task, he flew from the test site to the floor to search beneath the coffee table, where he had seen his owner place a seed cup before testing began.
...
When Griffin was 33 weeks old, his food preferences stabilized, so we could test this possibility [whether he would be surprised when his favourite snack was switched]. On his first trial, we presented a cashew (a favored item) but hid a less desired Bird Diet nugget during a successive invisible displacement. Griffin upended the final box and stared at the pellet. He immediately turned over the other boxes, then ran to the experimenters. He repeated this behavior on a trial with a different box as the final hiding place. We then replicated the procedure without substitution; Griffin uncovered and ate the cashew without continuing his search.
Before testing Alex, we reacquainted him with the procedures because he had not had such tasks in several years. On a standard Task 14 trial, he promptly chose the last screen and obtained a cashew. We then administered Task 16: After upending the box and finding a pellet, Alex turned from the apparatus to the experimenters, narrowing his eyes to slits, a behavior we have come to interpret as "anger."' To ensure cooperation on the next trial, we gave him the expected nut. His reaction to finding a pellet on the final trial was similar to his reaction on the first, except that he banged his beak on the table-another sign of frustration or displeasure.
{true referent language vs conceptual or operant association}
I had two reasons for teaching "want" and for studying how Alex acquired and used the term. First, I needed to determine whether, when he incorrectly identified objects with labels for more favored items, he was attempting to obtain treats rather than making errors (see Chapter 3). Specifically, if I could separate requests from errors, I would have a better indication of Alex's labeling capacity (Premack 1976). Second, I wanted to determine the extent of his communicative competence-a term generally defined as the ability to convey intent and to respond to the intent of others (Fay and Schuler 1980; see Smith 1991 for a discussion in terms of information processing). Could Alex convey his wants and needs by means of what to him was an artificial communication system? Given that his most frequent identification errors involved labels for treats (e.g., foods not freely available, such as nuts) or items with which he generally interacted for extended periods of time (e.g., corks he chewed to shreds), his behavior suggested some level of intent and thus communicative competence. Also, he would often toss an object he had identified and received from a trainer and immediately produce the label for a more favored object or food. Alex thus seemed a good subject for studying whether a nonhuman might use "want" in a referential, intentional way.
...
I also suggest that some spontaneous combinations of signing chimpanzees-such as use of "water-bird" on the appearance of a swan (Fouts and Rigby 1977)-fit into the contextual/
conceptual category. The chimpanzee has some concept of what constitutes a bird (wings, beak, etc.), of what constitutes water (wetness, etc.), and the context (interaction with humans) in which labeling occurs. Without further information about how such a term is used, however, we cannot designate it as referential.
{Linguistic creativity}
One incident, involving his response to apples, nevertheless suggests that Alex has some capacity for intentional creativity (Pepperberg 1990c). We were examining the effect of another parrot's presence during training and were limited to using a colleague's pet-one that did not talk and would attend only if we used her favorite food, apples. We thus made an exception to our rule against training food labels, and in fall 1984 began training "apple." At that time Alex already used the labels "banana," "cherry," and "grape." During formal sessions, he began to produce a /p/. At the end of the season for fresh apples, he refused these fruits, and his vocalizations remained at this level. We thus removed apples from training and the laboratory. Apples were reintroduced in the spring, were eaten, and /p/ reappeared in the first training session. During the second week of training, however, Alex looked at the fruit, said, "Banerry ... I want banerry," and snatched a bite. He not only persistently identified the fruit as "banerry" in subsequent sessions, but also slowed production and sharpened his elocution ("ban-err-eeee"), much as trainers do when teaching a new label (Pepperberg 1990c).
{Fun anecdotes}
My students and I have also successfully mapped many of Alex's requests for information (Pepperberg 1990c). Thus whether or not his queries "What's that?" "What color?" and so forth, are intentional, we treat them as such. Although Alex repeatedly asked about the shape of wooden plant stakes ("long" wood), round objects ("no-corner"), or the label for the board above his gym ("shelf'), he never acquired the appropriate labels. He did, however, learn "grey" by querying a student about the color of his reflection in a mirror (Pepperberg 1983b), and began uttering "rock" after querying us about a lava-stone beak conditioner he repeatedly tossed from the top of his cage. We answered his query ("What's that?") about covers in the Piagetian object permanence study (Chapter 10) with "box"; he produced "bock" (Pepperberg and Kozak 1986). "Bock" and "box" are now used interchangeably to label square or rectangular containers. After asking about the vegetable we were eating and its color, he began to ask for "carrot" and acquired functional use of that label and of "orange." He identified novel "grey" and "orange" objects, on first trials, without subsequent training (Pepperberg 1990c); few errors were made on later identifications (Table 13.2).6
April 10, 2022
Irene Pepperberg marcó un antes y un después en el campo de la etología, la cognición de las aves de orden psitaciforme, y la psicología comparada entre loros y humanos.
En este libro expone su procedimiento del Modelo/Rival, cuya recompensa debía ser el objeto del que se estaba hablando, para evitar comportamientos que tendrían lugar en caso de condicionamiento operante.
Los datos sobre el Loro Alex (y otros loros, cacatúas ninfas, periquitos, guacamayos, etc), el principal protagonista de su investigación, son muy claros con respecto a la inteligencia de los loros: su precisión alcanzaba alrededor del 80% en todas de las pruebas.
Gracias a la investigación de Irene Pepperberg, de Alex y sus compañeros, y de los estudiantes que se dedicaron a este estudio, se ha podido constatar que, efectivamente, los loros no se limitan a imitar el habla humana, sino que la comprenden y hacen uso de ella para sus propósitos si han sido debidamente entrenados (y también cuidados, es evidente).
Son capaces del uso referencial, de adquirir conceptos categóricos con referentes en el mundo, y también más abstractos, tales como igual, diferente o ausencia, además de competencia numérica (actualmente hallada en muchas más especies de aves), conceptos relativos o razonamiento analógico, el concepto piagetiano de permanencia de los objetos y la intencionalidad del uso del habla humana, en su caso, del habla inglesa.
La tesis de Irene, además del alcance de las capacidades cognitivas de los loros, hace referencia a que tales habilidades ya están presentes en ellos para su supervivencia en la naturaleza, pero gracias al aprendizaje del habla referencial son capaces de expresar verbalmente sus propias competencias (especialmente a través de las pruebas de habla referencial y adquisición de etiquetas).
Se trata de un libro extremadamente técnico similar a la lectura continuada de papers (aviso), y que no ha sido traducido ni publicado al español, pero merece mucho la pena. Destaco también la explicación que ofrece acerca del tracto vocal de los loros (aunque es uno de los capítulos más áridos) para intentar comprender por qué son capaces de imitar el habla humana (ojo, imitar el habla humana, pero no como mera copia, sino con fines comunicativos interespecie), y su prudencia en las conclusiones, además de que en todo momento tuvo en cuenta las diferentes percepciones sensoriales entre los loros y los humanos, que podrían dar como válidas o como erróneas algunas pruebas.
Termina el libro con la esperanza de haber destruido el mito de las aves como animales poco interesantes que se guían tan solo por su instinto, y un alegato contra la destrucción de sus hábitats naturales, así como del tráfico de estas especies.
Lo recomiendo encarecidamente a quien tenga interés en esta temática, y sin duda, estoy deseando leer "Alex & me", que tiene un tono mucho más divultativo con anécdotas personales de Alex.
En este libro expone su procedimiento del Modelo/Rival, cuya recompensa debía ser el objeto del que se estaba hablando, para evitar comportamientos que tendrían lugar en caso de condicionamiento operante.
Los datos sobre el Loro Alex (y otros loros, cacatúas ninfas, periquitos, guacamayos, etc), el principal protagonista de su investigación, son muy claros con respecto a la inteligencia de los loros: su precisión alcanzaba alrededor del 80% en todas de las pruebas.
Gracias a la investigación de Irene Pepperberg, de Alex y sus compañeros, y de los estudiantes que se dedicaron a este estudio, se ha podido constatar que, efectivamente, los loros no se limitan a imitar el habla humana, sino que la comprenden y hacen uso de ella para sus propósitos si han sido debidamente entrenados (y también cuidados, es evidente).
Son capaces del uso referencial, de adquirir conceptos categóricos con referentes en el mundo, y también más abstractos, tales como igual, diferente o ausencia, además de competencia numérica (actualmente hallada en muchas más especies de aves), conceptos relativos o razonamiento analógico, el concepto piagetiano de permanencia de los objetos y la intencionalidad del uso del habla humana, en su caso, del habla inglesa.
La tesis de Irene, además del alcance de las capacidades cognitivas de los loros, hace referencia a que tales habilidades ya están presentes en ellos para su supervivencia en la naturaleza, pero gracias al aprendizaje del habla referencial son capaces de expresar verbalmente sus propias competencias (especialmente a través de las pruebas de habla referencial y adquisición de etiquetas).
Se trata de un libro extremadamente técnico similar a la lectura continuada de papers (aviso), y que no ha sido traducido ni publicado al español, pero merece mucho la pena. Destaco también la explicación que ofrece acerca del tracto vocal de los loros (aunque es uno de los capítulos más áridos) para intentar comprender por qué son capaces de imitar el habla humana (ojo, imitar el habla humana, pero no como mera copia, sino con fines comunicativos interespecie), y su prudencia en las conclusiones, además de que en todo momento tuvo en cuenta las diferentes percepciones sensoriales entre los loros y los humanos, que podrían dar como válidas o como erróneas algunas pruebas.
Termina el libro con la esperanza de haber destruido el mito de las aves como animales poco interesantes que se guían tan solo por su instinto, y un alegato contra la destrucción de sus hábitats naturales, así como del tráfico de estas especies.
Lo recomiendo encarecidamente a quien tenga interés en esta temática, y sin duda, estoy deseando leer "Alex & me", que tiene un tono mucho más divultativo con anécdotas personales de Alex.
January 20, 2018
This is the sciency companion to Alex and Me, which I believe should actually be read first even though it was published later. Alex and Me is not only more fun because it is centered around anecdotes which were often outside testing, but it also provides some groundwork for who Irene Pepperberg and Alex are as individuals, and thus explains some things which are otherwise rather hard to understand in The Alex Studies. Knowing the personal motivations and connections between the trainers and their subjects also provides a foundation which makes The Alex Studies overall more interesting.
That said, in itself The Alex Studies is fairly thorough and methodical in explaining what experiments were done, how they were done and why without being overly tedious about it. There are a mountain of references to other authors, books and experiments, but not knowing who these are isn't too much of a handicap (however, reading the notes when the numbers for them show up is pretty essential, so expect to flip to the back of the book an awful lot).
I definitely appreciated that the vaguest, perhaps least interesting studies were at the back of the book, and that the author was always clear about things which were theorized but not known, and was very careful in exactly what conclusions she drew from each study.
Most of all, I appreciated that the book never wavered from its subject, and did not go off on any little tangents about the author's life or personal opinions on various matters. She saved all of that for Alex and Me, which is where such things belong.
With the exception of chapters 15-16 (which discuss the mechanics of parrot sound production), I found all of the material to be relevant to my interests. The book is exactly what it purports to be by its title: a study of the cognitive and communicative abilities of grey parrots, and one should expect nothing more or less of it.
It's no mystery why Alex and Me is more popular. For one thing it is cheaper on average, but more importantly it is a storybook about a scientist and her parrot, told in a personal way, whereas The Alex Studies is a scientific work, aimed at people interested in such topics. I am interested in such topics, and yet I will restate the fact that I am glad I read Alex and Me first, as I think that makes The Alex Studies much more interesting and comprehensible.
That said, in itself The Alex Studies is fairly thorough and methodical in explaining what experiments were done, how they were done and why without being overly tedious about it. There are a mountain of references to other authors, books and experiments, but not knowing who these are isn't too much of a handicap (however, reading the notes when the numbers for them show up is pretty essential, so expect to flip to the back of the book an awful lot).
I definitely appreciated that the vaguest, perhaps least interesting studies were at the back of the book, and that the author was always clear about things which were theorized but not known, and was very careful in exactly what conclusions she drew from each study.
Most of all, I appreciated that the book never wavered from its subject, and did not go off on any little tangents about the author's life or personal opinions on various matters. She saved all of that for Alex and Me, which is where such things belong.
With the exception of chapters 15-16 (which discuss the mechanics of parrot sound production), I found all of the material to be relevant to my interests. The book is exactly what it purports to be by its title: a study of the cognitive and communicative abilities of grey parrots, and one should expect nothing more or less of it.
It's no mystery why Alex and Me is more popular. For one thing it is cheaper on average, but more importantly it is a storybook about a scientist and her parrot, told in a personal way, whereas The Alex Studies is a scientific work, aimed at people interested in such topics. I am interested in such topics, and yet I will restate the fact that I am glad I read Alex and Me first, as I think that makes The Alex Studies much more interesting and comprehensible.
August 11, 2020
This is a very interesting book, one I have had on the self for a long time without reading. Here a parrot by the name of Alex is taught language, which then extrapolates into deeper forms of symbolic meaning as he enters the field of language is able to seemingly comprehend, communicate and navigate the world with his human caretakers.
Since this is one parrot there is only so much that can be said about grey parrots or birds in general, but the approach given by the scientists in this study offer a different sense of what language is -- especially in how they teach Alex by modeling the language for him and then inviting him to participate. This deliberate action addresses much of the questions that arise when animals are taught language, even sign language, as it is is not completely clear that the animals are aware of the meaning making aspect of language when they are trained to behave on cue to certain actions and situations by their trainers.
Here in this book, Pepperberg makes the very compelling argument that language is participation first -- and that animals are capable of limited participation in language if they are given the right presentation to enter it.
Since this is one parrot there is only so much that can be said about grey parrots or birds in general, but the approach given by the scientists in this study offer a different sense of what language is -- especially in how they teach Alex by modeling the language for him and then inviting him to participate. This deliberate action addresses much of the questions that arise when animals are taught language, even sign language, as it is is not completely clear that the animals are aware of the meaning making aspect of language when they are trained to behave on cue to certain actions and situations by their trainers.
Here in this book, Pepperberg makes the very compelling argument that language is participation first -- and that animals are capable of limited participation in language if they are given the right presentation to enter it.
July 26, 2017
If you are looking for more than a series of scientific papers which read rather dryly, then perhaps this book isn't for you. I picked it up so I might learn a little science which might help me to better understand my African Grey, Buddy. To date, he hasn't yet responded to any of the techniques used in the book for training Alex, perhaps because he was already three years old when I bought him. Having said that, it does help me to be aware that he has cognitive capacities that far exceed the near-mindless ability to "parrot." Each time he says "hello" to me when I come home in the evening, or whenever he imitates my dog whistle while I am playing with the dog, it demonstrates that he is a sentient being, albeit on a different level.
August 17, 2018
Dr. Pepperberg is a pioneer in the field of avian cognition and language development. Her work with Alex was groundbreaking and created the first crack in the bird brain stereotype. While at times a heavy and technical book, “The Alex Studies” is an incredibly detailed yet readable overview of her work with Alex. Truly shines a light on these amazing animals who are more like us than some might be willing to think. Alex not only learned a human based communication code but could use it functionally and referentially, form class categorizations, understand absence of information, and count, among many other remarkable achievements. Highly recommend for anyone interested in Avian cognition.
October 16, 2023
You’ve got to be *at least* as interested in parrot behavior as me to enjoy this book. It reads more like an extensive academic journal, but there are gems of enjoyable parrot behavior described in the charts and tables within. I took my time with this one, grounding my understanding of what these amazing birds are capable of. I’d love to pick up another of Pepperberg’s books next, “Alex & Me” focusing on her star subject, Alex, written with a more mainstream audience in mind.
March 27, 2016
I read this book a long time ago, when it was new, and thought I would reread it.
The information about Alex remains fascinating, but this time I was somewhat put off by the use of jargon. (Why say allospecific instead of cross-species, for example?) Still, I did appreciate the careful scientific view of what the Alex studies can tell us. And it was interesting also, to follow her analysis of why the methods used for training Alex were so successful, when other experimenters failed to get birds to communicate with people the way Alex could.
African Greys are excellent mimics, and many of the videos (on you-tube) show mostly rote memorization. But I know that sometimes birds really do use their verbal skills in ways that require something like thinking skills.
Our Grey repeats a lot of things my husband has said. But he also does some surprising things with words. He had learned to sing the song from the movie South Pacific, about Bloody Mary, who was always "chewing betel nuts." One day, he varied it by replacing the name Mary with the name of one of our other parrots. I'm not sure he had any clue as to what sort of thing a betel nut might be, but it seemed that he know Mary was someone's name, and he put in somebody else's name.
It will be quite a while before I read this again, but it stays on our shelves, because my husband read it too.
The information about Alex remains fascinating, but this time I was somewhat put off by the use of jargon. (Why say allospecific instead of cross-species, for example?) Still, I did appreciate the careful scientific view of what the Alex studies can tell us. And it was interesting also, to follow her analysis of why the methods used for training Alex were so successful, when other experimenters failed to get birds to communicate with people the way Alex could.
African Greys are excellent mimics, and many of the videos (on you-tube) show mostly rote memorization. But I know that sometimes birds really do use their verbal skills in ways that require something like thinking skills.
Our Grey repeats a lot of things my husband has said. But he also does some surprising things with words. He had learned to sing the song from the movie South Pacific, about Bloody Mary, who was always "chewing betel nuts." One day, he varied it by replacing the name Mary with the name of one of our other parrots. I'm not sure he had any clue as to what sort of thing a betel nut might be, but it seemed that he know Mary was someone's name, and he put in somebody else's name.
It will be quite a while before I read this again, but it stays on our shelves, because my husband read it too.
September 3, 2008
A fascinating study of the process of language acquisition in parrots, Irene Pepperberg's text provides very thorough context for her experiments with Alex the African gray and explains in great detail what she was able to learn from them. My one criticism of this book is that it is very academic in nature. Clearly Peppererg has had to defend her theories many times over the years and therefore explains in painstaking detail her scientific methods and conclusions. While I appreciated the text for what it is, I also felt that, from the casual reader's perspective, it would have been nice to read more anecdotal details about Irene's work with Alex. That said, I found The Alex Studies an absorbing and thought-provoking read.
January 8, 2013
I have read several accounts of animal language experiments. This is the one I enjoyed the most. Not only does Pepperberg describe her methods for teaching a parrot to communicate, as well as noting similarities to human children learning language and the differences, she also gives fun and fascinating glimpses into Alex's personality.
October 13, 2008
Thoughtfully and thoroughly researched, entertaining, yet extremeley academically written. Not an easy read, but for those interested in animal cognition, this is a must have. Dr. Irene Pepperberg has, and always will be my hero in the field of animal psychology. R.I.P., Alex.
February 22, 2010
Read awhile back, ut need to reread. Didn't finish it. Sort of a technical training manual for CAGs, particulary for Alex and Ms. Pepperberg's research parrots/friends. Very useful as we hav a CAG--however I didn't follow through. Need to reread it.
February 21, 2014
GREAT INFORMATION! But a very tedious read... As a reseacher interested in the topc or replicating her studies, it's a must see; I gained a lot out of it in this sense.
Read
April 1, 2018If you are interested in animal behavior and stereotypes, this is awesome!
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