(Friday, July 6, 9am)
Moderator
A key feature of human cognition is the ability to form perceptual and functional categories, use concepts, detect and learn abstract patterns and rules. These abilities form the basis for many traits that would seem uniquely human, such as using language and enjoying music. I will explore whether and to what extent such abilities may also be present in birds and what this may tell about how the cognitive abilities of bird species relate to those of humans.
Michelle J. Spierings and Carel ten Cate (2016) Budgerigars and zebra finches differ in how they generalize in an artificial grammar learning experiment. PNAS
Carel ten Cate,Michelle Spierings, Jeroen Hubert and Henkjan Honing (2016) Can birds perceive rhythmic patterns? A review and experiments on a songbird and a parrot species. Frontiers in Pschology
Carel ten Cate (2018) The comparative study of grammar learning mechanisms: birds as models. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences 21;13-18. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2017.11.008
Carel ten Cate & Susan D. Healy (Eds.) 2017. Avian Cognition (book). Cambridge University Press. www.cambridge.org/9781107092389
I understood, during the part on the artificial grammar learning, that birds can detect pattern that are also detect by humans. Since we compare both of them, I was wondering if the mechanisms to do so are the same between birds and humans? You just concluded your talk by saying that humans more controlled by conceptual, and birds by perceptual processes. Is it something that you have tested yet or something that you are planning to test in the future, so we can draw some conclusions on the different (or same) mechanisms between the two?
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think is the difference between "perceptual" and "conceptual" processes, Priscilla?
DeleteWe also tested humans on the same strings as birds in several experiments. The humans generally detected the underlying patterns, i.e. noted the conceptual regularity of the strings and were worse at remembering the individual strings, while the birds (zebra finches) are better at memorizing the individual strings and poor at noticing the patterns.
DeleteI imagined perceptual as really the basis of everything (feeling when I hear, I touch, I smell something, for example) and conceptual as a larger "category" (many perceptions together making a concept). I had difficulties to picture it for the grammar learning in birds but now, with the answer of M. Carel ten Cate, I understand more what he wanted to say. Thanks for your answer!
Delete
ReplyDeleteEarlier in the summer school, we had other presentations about songbirds. The sample presented were different, but to us, they were the same. Only birds could discriminate, we could not! Those beats seems far from what they encounter in nature, so is the popular music for those dancing animals. What is the effect of the artificiality of those sounds ?
Apparently they can learn them...
DeleteThe starting point of our work are often the natural sounds of animals, which may show variation in many features, also in what we, humans, perceive as 'rhythmic' features. This gives rise to the question whether animals can perceive any (also artificial) rhythmic patterns and if they do so, whether they are sensitive to similar parameters as we are. In order to address such a question artificial sounds capturing the essential features of rhythms controlling for other parameters are needed.
DeleteIt is interesting that some animals seem to respond to music in a way that suggest they are sensitive to the beat (like snowball). But as music has a complex structure, here also further experiments are needed to detect what it is exactly they respond to and whether and how that is related to senstivities they use in their normal life.
Thank you for your answer!
DeleteI am really impressed by the results of your relational match-to-sample test. Do you know if individuals or species who score higher to this kind of analogy task are better imitator, being better at seeing similarity in dissimilarity?
ReplyDeleteYou are asking about the relation between perceptual and production capacities.
DeleteThe experiments on the relational match-to-sample task were not ours, but, as I mentioned, done by others (Obozova, Tanya; Smirnova, Anna; Zorina, Zoya; et al. 2015 ANIMAL COGNITION 18; 1363-1371; Smirnova, Anna; Zorina, Zoya; Obozova, Tanya; et al.2015 Current Biology 25; 256-260). The species tested by these researchers (crows and amazon parrots) are from groups containing species that are known to excell also in other cognitive tasks. Whether there is a relation to being better at motor imitation has not been examined.
DeleteThank you for the precision Carel ten Cate.
DeleteTo Stevan Harnad, I'm not sure to understand your implicit point about the fact that I wonder if there is a link between this specific perceptual capability and their production capacities to imitate... It seems to me that if it is the case, it could have some hudge implications.
I keep hearing about studies on bird communication as well as non-human primate communication and how they could “give us insights on human language” or the evolution of human language. I understood from your talk that thee are similarities, but how can we say that it cna give us insights? What does it really tell us about human language. As you mentionned at the beginning. Birds and humans are really far apart phylogenetically. So what’s the value of these comparisons?
ReplyDeleteThe comparative studies may cast light on auditory perception and vocal production capacities, and their interrelationship. It is more of a question whether they cast light on (human) language, which is far more than just an auditory/vocal communication capacity -- and is almost certainly unique to our species (almost as unique as sentience itself -- to sentient species).
DeleteHuman language is a complex communication system consisting of many different components, ranging from speech production and perception as the 'default' mode being used and vocal learning, to syntax,or referential signalling. Comparative studies can tell us which of these components are present in other species, and to what extent. This may give insights in various questions. E.g. studies on vocal learning in birds provide understanding of the neuromolecular mechanisms for vocal learning; studies on the perception of (speech) sounds by mammals and birds show that several perceptual features that, for instance, enable us to recognize and differentiate speech sounds irrespective of the speaker, or the use of prosody, are also present in other animals and hence more likely to have been already present before the evolution of language and served to enable speech evolution, rather than being a specialization due to the presence of language. There is also a heated debate on whether human syntax arises from learning mechanisms unique to humans (universal grammar) or is based on (or derived from) more generally shared learning mechanisms also found in other species. So, comparative studies on many features of language provide understanding about several underlying mechanisms as well as providing hypothesis for their evolution.
DeleteSome interesting features of human language:
ReplyDelete1. Expressive Power: There are no "primitive" languages: Anything that can be expressed at all (any proposition) can be expressed in any language. There is no language that can say some things but not others. Propositions are all inter-translatable (though not necessarily word-for-word).
2. Grammar: Human language has two kinds of grammars:
(OG) Ordinary Grammar, which differs from language to language, changes across time, and is learned,
and
(UG) Universal Grammar, which is complex, the same for all languages (except for a few learnable parametric variations), does not change across time, and is not learnable by children during their short language-development period. Therefore it is assumed that UG is innate.
Harnad, S. (2008). Why and how the problem of the evolution of Universal Grammar (UG) is hard. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 31(5), 524-525.
Blondin-Massé, A., Harnad, S., Picard, O. & St-Louis, B. (2013) Symbol Grounding and the Origin of Language: From Show to Tell. In: Lefebvre C, Comrie B & Cohen H (Eds.) Current Perspectives on the Origins of Language, Benjamin
Bonjour Étienne, quand tu dis: "Chomsky has been right on so much else, that this possibility definitely needs to be taken seriously. But to solve the hard problem, the Merge-mutation theory will need to explain exactly how UG is a matter of logical or functional necessity in order to be able to think at all."
DeletePlus précisément: "to be able to think at all".
Est-ce que tu crois que cette forme de "think" pourrait être impossible sans le ressenti?
Thanks for the talk!
ReplyDeleteHave you measured the effect of exposure to music among the birds in you experiments? As it is for humans, maybe the early exposition to various and simple rythm could make a difference in the perception and the reproduction of those rythms. The compelling variation of rythmic abilities among humans, I think testifies for the cultural dimension of that learning, maybe the phenomenon could also reach imitating birds?
No, we did not measure this. It is true that earlier exposure may affect later perception. I would not expect that just exposing birds to music or rhythmic patterns on itself would have an effect, if these patterns have no significance to the birds. It may just be background noise that they pay no attention to.
ReplyDeleteI would have a question for Dr ten Cate, but because I have no background in music or linguistics, I am not able to translate what I would like to say. So, if someone can help: J'ai récemment lu un article en français portant sur la difficulté accrue pour les locuteurs de certaines langues maternelles d'en maîtriser certaines autres. On y exposait par exemple que le français avait une prosodie peu étendue sur la gamme musicale, d'où le caractère doux à l'écoute de cette langue, que l'anglais couvrait un empan déjà beaucoup plus large sur la gamme mais toutefois inférieur à celui de langues dites "chantantes" comme certaines langues asiatiques ou l'arabe. Ma question serait donc: Do you know if talking birds are also sensible to those differences and do they show a preference for hearing or "learning" some human languages rather than other? My grandmother, whom had english as her first language and spoke fluently both french and english, succeeded to make a myna bird to talk but only when asked in english. This bird was also only wanting to "speak" (or imitate)the english language, even if raised in a mainly french-speaking environment.She wasn't able to get any result if she talked to the bird in french.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the talk.
ReplyDeleteDoes higher order cognitive abilities include theory of mind skills?
From a neurobiological perspective, how did the birds who had better abstraction/relational reasoning differ from those who didn’t?
Clairement, certaines espèces d’oiseaux peuvent détecter des règles/pattern dans des sons et sont capables de transférer ces règles à de nouveaux sons. Certaines espèces semblent plus efficaces pour détecter des composantes locales, alors que d’autres espèces sont capables de détecter des composantes plus globales. Chez les humains, pour abstraire et catégoriser, il faut être capable d’oublier ou d’ignorer certains traits d’un stimulus. Est-ce que la mémoire auditive des différentes espèces d’oiseaux pourrait jouer un rôle sur leur capacité à détecter les différents traits d’un son?
ReplyDeleteJe suis intriguée par la possible présence d'une grammaire dans le langage des oiseaux. Où puis-je trouvé une explication concrète de cette grammaire universelle. Comment fonctionne-e-elle? L'article dit que les règles sont trop complexes et abstraites, mais quelles sont-elles exactement? Mais trop complexes et abstraites pour quoi? Pour les reconnaître? A-t-on une idée de ce à quoi elles ressemblent?
ReplyDelete