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Cognitive and Communicative Abilities of Grey Parrots
Harvard University Press
May 2002
On Sale: April 30, 2002
448 pages
ISBN: 0674008065
EAN: 9780674008069
Paperback
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Non-Fiction Pet-Lover
The Alex Studies Cognitive and Communicative Abilities of
Grey Parrots Irene Maxine Pepperberg 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. Irene Maxine Pepperberg is
Associate Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology,
Associate Professor of Psychology, and Affiliate in the
Program in Neuroscience at the University of Arizona.
January 61/8 x 91/4 10 halftones, 11 line illus., 44 tables
448 pp.
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