In the early 2000s, Νoam Chomsκy and other linguists believed that if there is anything unique to human language, it is recursion, and this is what distinguishes human language from communication. next of animals.
Turns out, it’s not: a 2020 study found that rhesus monkeys can do it too, and a recently published study found crows can do recursion, too.
OK, so what is recursion? It is the ability to recognize the elements in the air in greater sequence – what is considered one of the main characteristics of the human capacity for symbolism. Consider this example: “A rat chased a cat that ran away.” Although the phrase is a bit difficult to understand, it is easy for adults to understand that the mouse runs, the cat chases. The recursion is just this: cast the elements “rat” to “ran” and “cat” to “chased”.
More simply, similar to humans, monkeys and crows can recognize that one structure can contain other meaningful structures. For decades, scientists assumed that humans, or at least primates, were the only animals that could understand the reaction. However, after discovering about two years ago that rhesus monkeys can understand the idea of recursion as well as children between the ages of three and four (despite additional training), the team has now conducted a new study. Similar experiment with crows. and found that they were superior to monkeys in some respects!
Are crows capable of understanding language? Image credit: h.κoρρdelaney Researchers from the University of Τübingen studied crows using the same method their colleagues used in a previous study with monkeys in Wisconsin. In this case, the animals have to find a pair of symbols in a sentence of symbols, so, for example, they have to discover the position of a sequence of symbols. find parentheses.
As they did this, the researchers created increasingly longer sentences to see if the subjects still recognized the embedded sentences.
For rhesus monkeys, subjects were able to distinguish embedded cues in 40% of the trials, but these monkeys received no further training!
So the recursive possibilities are not limited to rhyming genealogy, as it turns out. This also helps to reiterate how smart crows are.
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Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education