Alex

Parrots, People and Pedagogies: A Look at Teaching and Education

grrlscientist — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 05:59:57 +0000

Parrots, People and Pedagogies: A Look at Teaching and Education

tags: psychology, behavior, pedagogy, education, learning, teaching methods, model/rival technique, Avian Learning EXperiment, Avian Language EXperiment, ALEX, researchblogging.org,peer-reviewed research, journal club

ALEX the African Grey Parrot and Dr Irene Pepperberg.

Image: The ALEX Foundation.

Like anyone who has taught science courses, and probably like anyone who has ever taught anything to a classroom in the history of mankind, I've wondered how to motivate my students to really care about the material they are learning, beyond simply "studying for the test." For example, I have used a group method of study where groups of 4 students are each assigned a specific task: to become an expert in a particular area and to share their knowledge with the other groups. This method is only partially successful since it is dependent upon good classroom rapport and careful management by the professor, otherwise, each group of "experts" can selectively withhold or misrepresent information that is important for developing a better understanding of the topic at hand.

Since after my postdoc funding ended, I was only occasionally hired as lowly and disposable adjunct with a very low tolerance for institutionalized bullshit, so my years as a professor of science ended some time ago, and I was not able to develop my ideas about teaching further. But a sweet little pedagogy paper was just published by Malcolm McCallum, an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Texas A&M University-Texarkana. This paper describes a very interesting method for successfully teaching students how to read scientific papers. To my eyes, Dr McCallum's teaching method looks surprisingly like the "model/rival technique" used to teach Alex the African Grey Parrot how to do all sorts of things.

Basically, the model/rival technique works like this: there are two trainers, one is a professor and the other is a "model student." The "model student" models the desired student behavior, and is perceived by the student (in this case, the student was Alex the Gray Parrot) as being a rival for the professor's attention. During each session, the "model student" and the student exchange roles so the student/parrot realizes that the process is interactive and flexible.

In this paper, Dr McCallum describes a common classroom situation: trying to get the students to actually read a scientific paper. You'd be surprised to learn that this is not as easy as it sounds, because reading and understanding a scientific paper is difficult. In these classes, the professor would assign a paper or series of papers and one student would act as the presentor of the paper while the others were the student "presentees." To ensure that the "presentees" also read the paper instead of passively sitting in the classroom or texting their friends, the professor would either reward or force student questions and discussion. To do this, some faculty awarded points for each question asked. Others asked questions about the paper on exams. Frequently, "participation points" would be awarded to force individual participation.

"In fact, the many different angles used by professors in my many classes all ended the same way," writes Dr McCallum in his paper. "Inevitably, a growing number of students did not read the papers unless they were the presenter."

To engage all his students, Dr McCallum devised and tested an innovative method in the two-hour lab section for his senior-level environmental physiology class. The design worked like this: Dr McCallum brought two copies of 10 different manuscripts on critical thermal maxima. In this case, almost all of these manuscripts were by Victor Hutchison, and they were very similar except for the organism involved. Only one of the manuscripts was a review paper. In a classroom of 20 students or less, each student was given a different manuscript. Only a few students had a duplicate paper, so almost everyone was responsible for their own article. Then, the students were given roughly 15 minutes to read their paper in class. At the end of that time, Dr McCallum asked if everyone was done. If anyone was not done reading, they were given a little more time to finish.

After everyone had finished reading their paper, Dr McCallum randomly asked one student to briefly describe what their paper was about. After they had done this, Dr McCallum asked the other student who had that same paper if the first student's iteration followed their understanding. Invariably, the second student had things to add or ask. Then Dr McCallum randomly asked a student with a different paper to compare what they read in their manuscript to what the other two students presented. If a second student had read the same paper, Dr McCallum then asked that individual if s/he had anything to add. Then, Dr McCallum asked the presenters of the first paper if they felt that the comparison was accurate and to explain why (or why not). Dr McCallum found that continuing this scenario through approximately four papers led to a fluid discussion where only an occasional question from the professor was necessary to stimulate further participation (Figure 1):

DOI: 10.1890/0012-9623-91.3.363

The result of this model was not only to circumvent many lazy student behaviors, but also to improve reading comprehension by familiarizing students with how to read, process, and evaluate complex scientific manuscripts in a short period of time. To test this hypothesis, Dr McCallum included a 10-point short-answer question on an exam that asked students to discuss the topic of the papers that were discussed in class. He found that almost all of his students had at least a working knowledge of the topic and 65% earned at least 7 points on this question. When compared to the more traditional "presenter-presentee" scenario used during the previous semester, only 33% of the students earned at least 7 points on a similar question.

But even more interesting was that Dr McCallum's students' GRE, MCAT, and ETS major field exam scores increased significantly. For example, the class averages for raw section scores in the ETS major field test in biology increased 12% from the previous year and 50% relative to students taking the same classes with other instructors within one year of introducing this technique. Additionally, the number of students entering graduate and medical school also rose.

So what does this have to do with Alex the African Grey Parrot and the model/rival technique for teaching? The way I see this, each student takes turns being both the "model" and the "rival" for the professor's attention. Because the professor sets up a rapidly moving group-based model/rival scenario, it challenges each student to quickly assess and improve on their own personal techniques for successfully reading and reporting on a scientific paper, thereby attracting the professor's attention (the reward). Further, due to the structure of this scenario, where only a few (two?) students have duplicate papers, and thus, everyone possesses an important piece of the puzzle, no one student can monopolize the professor's attention -- the damaging "teacher's pet" scenario is avoided.

This is a really exciting paper and for the first time in years, I wish I had a classroom of my own so I could try this technique myself. Do any of you, dear readers, wish to volunteer to be in an online "classroom" to see if we can translate what was described in this paper to an online setting? If so, maybe we can work together to develop an online model of our own? (On the other hand, I've -- unknowingly -- been trying to develop a modified scenario of this for my mystery birds feature for awhile now. I think it time for me to rethink what I am doing there in the light of this paper's findings).

Source:

McCallum, M. (2010). A Method for Encouraging Classroom Discussion of Scientific Papers. Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America, 91 (3), 363-366 DOI: 10.1890/0012-9623-91.3.363.

Read more:

The Alex Studies: Cognitive and Communicative Abilities of Grey Parrots by Irene Pepperberg (Paperback) [Amazon: $21.79].

grrlscientist Fri, 07/16/2010 - 01:59

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Avian Language EXperiment

Avian Learning EXperiment

behavior

bpr3.org/?p=52

learning

model/rival technique

Pedagogy

peer-reviewed research

Alex the parrot and Snowball the cockatoo show that birds can dance

edyong — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 10:00:41 +0000

Alex the parrot and Snowball the cockatoo show that birds can dance

Snowball, the sulphur-crested cockatoo, is an internet superstar. He's known for his penchant for grooving to music, notably Everybody by the Backstreet Boys. As the music plays, Snowball bobs his head and taps his feet in perfect time with it. If it speeds up or slows down, his rhythm does too. He is one of two parrots that are leading a dance dance revolution, by showing that the human behaviour of moving in time to music (even really, really bad music) is one that's shared by other animals.

People who've attended parties at scientific events may question the ability of humans to move to a beat, but it's a fairly universal skill and one that many people thought was unique to our species. After all, domesticated animals like dogs and cats don't do it, and they spend their time with humans and have been exposed to our music for thousands of years. Other animals may produce periodic sounds or perform complex dances, but sensing and moving in time to complex rhythms is a different matter.

Snowball and his feathered friend Alex (the late, famous African grey parrot) could change all of that. Aniruddh Patel from San Diego's Neurosciences Institute found evidence of Snowball's excellent rhythm under laboratory conditions. Before Alex's recent death, Adena Schachner from Harvard University (working with Alex's keeper, the renowned parrot psychologist Irene Pepperberg) found that he could also match Snowball's bopping.

Both groups of researchers believe that the parrots' dancing skills depend on a talent for "vocal learning" - the ability to mimic the sounds of other individuals. To do this, animals need to have excellent coordination between their sense of hearing and their motor functions. Indeed, after searching YouTube for videos of dancing animals, Schachner only found evidence of moving to beats (a talent known as "entrainment") among 15 species that practice vocal learning - 14 parrots and the Asian elephant.

Snowball himself came to Patel's attention after the young scientist saw the parrot on YouTube. Snowball's owner has bought him at a bird show at the age of 6 and noticed that the rhythmic cockatoo would bob his head along to the Backstreet Boys. Over the next six years, the man and his daughter danced with the bird using "pronounced arm gestures".

In his lab, Patel showed that Snowball could alter the tempo of his moves as the music he listened to sped up or slowed down. Demonstrating how far people will go in the name of science, Patel created 11 different versions of Everybody by the Backstreet Boys (Snowball's favourite track), that were anywhere from 2.5% to 20% faster or slower. Patel classified Snowball's movements as "dancing" if he bobbed his head in time with the beats, and he did so in about 60% of the trials. He managed to keep time during all the variants of the track, except for the very slowest ones.

During the experiment, Snowball showed sustained bouts of excellent timing followed by periods where he lost the beat somewhat. That's very similar to the way that young human children learn to move to music but Patel quite rightly raises the possibility that Snowball may just have been moving randomly to the music and occasionally synchronised to it by mere chance. But statistical tests say otherwise - the odds that he was simply fluking his rhythm were 1 in 500.

It's possible that Snowball's boogieing was limited to music he was familiar with. But Scachner found that he and Alex were all too capable of dancing to new tunes. She says, "Alex had never heard the music we played for him in the study before. It was entirely novel; we made it ourselves. For most of the stimuli Snowball heard, he had only heard these songs once or twice before, and a dance-like response was reported on the first time he heard them. So it doesn't look like these animals underwent any sort of intensive training to make this response happen."

Scachner recorded both birds moving to a variety of percussion-heavy original compositions with a range of different tempos. Both birds bobbed their heads in time to the beats. Through her own independent analysis, Scachner found that they did so far more consistently than expected by chance. In some trials, their rhythm was as perfect as that of human listeners.

Schachner says "Claims of human uniqueness are defeated by even one well-documented case study demonstrating the existence of a capacity in a non-human animal." Two case studies then, should be doubly compelling. The big question though is how widespread the ability to move to a beat is in the animal kingdom.

Both groups of scientists suggest that the ability is limited to animals that can learn to mimic each others' calls. It's an exclusive club, which includes whales and dolphins, seals and sea lions, elephants, some bats, parrots, hummingbirds and songbirds (most impressively in the spectacular lyrebird). Their abilities depend on strong ties between their sense of hearing and their motor control and specifically on a part of the brain called the basal ganglia, which also supports our own ability to perceive beats.

To test that theory, Schachner turned to YouTube, where dancing animals are particularly popular. She found almost 4,000 videos of animals moving to music and analysed each for any synchronised movements that might be generously described as dancing. She found that only videos featuring vocal mimics fit the bill, and only those of 15 species - 14 types of parrots and the Asian elephant. In at least 9 of those, the movements were consistent enough that they were unlikely to have arisen through chance.

Among the species that don't mimic each other's sounds, Schachner couldn't find a single example of true entrainment, even among those that spend a lot of time with us (cats or dogs). Even in cases where people spend a lot of effort training dogs to take part in "canine freestyle" dance competitions, there was no evidence that the pooches were moving in time to the music.

Of course, there are many biases that affect whether a video ends up on YouTube or not, but there's no reason to suspect that vocal mimics would be relatively more represented. In fact, quite the opposite was true - non-mimics outnumbered the others by a factor of two. All in all, Schachner's study strongly suggests that vocal mimicry is a must if animals are to boogie in time to beats.

Even our closest relatives, apes and monkeys, lack this skill. Chimps can certainly learn from one another, but they don't mimic each other's sounds and Schachner found no video evidence that they could move to a beat. That will obviously need to be tested further, but it's telling that she put nine cottontop tamarin monkeys through the same tests as her parrots, and all of them came up short.

These studies shed some light on the origins of our own appreciation for music. Some scientists believe that our brains are specifically adapted in some way to perceive and respond to music. Others say that our fondness for melodies is just the by-product of some other mental skill, such as vocal mimicry. Snowball and Alex suggest that the second idea is right.

Reference: Schachner, A., Brady, T., Pepperberg, I., & Hauser, M. (2009). Spontaneous Motor Entrainment to Music in Multiple Vocal Mimicking Species Current Biology DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2009.03.061 Patel, A., Iversen, J., Bregman, M., & Schulz, I. (2009). Experimental Evidence for Synchronization to a Musical Beat in a Nonhuman Animal Current Biology DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2009.03.038

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edyong Thu, 04/30/2009 - 06:00

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Another great story, Ed. It's interesting that among the primates, "dancing to a beat" appears to be peculiar to humans.

Interesting & great videos! I wonder if this mimicking ability in humans is related to the development of oral language.

I'm going to go search youtube for dancing elephants right now. Crazy!

I'm also not quite sure what type of vocal mimic an "animal" is. I guess that's what we get for early results and figures without legends. Let us know when the paper comes out; I can't wait to read the details.

As a musician and science writer, I find this research highly amusing and fascinating. Snowball is clearly better at the grooving than Alex (alas!) was. However, if you took a random sample of humans and gave them the same test, you'd probably find some of them couldn't find a beat if it hit them over the head, while others could get it right away. It seems very odd that primates in general are not so talented as birds. Maybe the gift resides outside the cerebral cortex.

When I glimpsed this research on Eurekalert! last week I just laughed at the videos and couldnÂ´t see the point on doing such kind of study. Now I see why it matters.
Very interesting and intringuing too. For instance, I can imitate the sounds of many musical instruments with my mouth, but am terrible at following musical rhythm with body movements. I never would suspect that both abilities could be interrelated.

Very cool!

It would be fascinating to take some top-notch animal intellects (like chimps and crows) and see if they can groove to the beat under laboratory conditions (rather than youtube).

I don't know if crows have vocal mimickry (I would guess that they do), but if they did maybe some other highly intelligent, though non-mimic, bird would work (as well as one that is not particularly intelligent, but still a mimic, assuming one could be found!)

What about whales? They have complex vocalizations. Can they dance? Just wondering.

Have none of you ever heard of special effects? Maybe the parrot is "dancing"--at least it isn't shifting its weight in a way the defies the laws of physics. The cockatoo is not doing anything resembling dancing. Look at the bird's balance when it lifts one leg--the bird should be off center, but it's not. Its body is perfectly balanced, even when its leg is raised far off the ground.

Whatever happened to skeptical scientists?

What really interests me is what "base" they used to create this video. It isn't a cockatoo, but what is it?

Thanks for this interesting piece. I would like to recommend a YouTube video of Frostie, a cockatoo who (I regret to say) dances even better than Snowball. I admire Snowball, but Frostie's creativity when dancing to Ray Charles ("Shake Your Tail Feather") is beyond the pale: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bt9xBuGWgw

Alex the African Grey Parrot: Was Alex a Genius?

grrlscientist — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 07:59:59 +0000

Alex the African Grey Parrot: Was Alex a Genius?

tags: Irene Pepperberg, Alex, Alex the African grey parrot, talking parrot, cognition, behavior, streaming video

Tonight, I will attend Irene Pepperberg's reading where she will read from her new book about her friend and colleague, Alex the African grey parrot. Below is an interesting video showing some of what Alex was capable of doing, and it also provides a small glimpse into the relationship between Alex and Irene [2:06]

grrlscientist Sun, 11/02/2008 - 02:59

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Alex the African grey parrot

I don't think that Alex was a genius, just simply smarter than most Republicans... ;-)

Alex may have been smarter than the average African grey (or maybe not--certainly not smarter than my grey Paula!), but he demonstrated the intelligence that exists to a greater or lesser degree on all parrots and, by extension, in most if not all animals. They are not unthinking, unfeeling beings that we can use without considering how they perceive our interactions with them. The female dog in a puppy mill is suffering. The fish suffocating in the bottom of the boat is suffering. The duck seeing its mate shot dead is suffering. The horse experiencing a good currying is feeling happy. Treat animals with the consideration a thinking, feeling creature deserves. (That doesn't mean don't eat them, but it does mean killing them without causing anxiety and pain.)

Irene Pepperberg to Appear in NYC

grrlscientist — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 19:28:41 +0000

Irene Pepperberg to Appear in NYC

tags: Irene Pepperberg, cognition, learning, parrots, birds, Alex Foundation

Cognitive scientist, Irene Pepperberg and her parrots, Griffin, Arthur (Wart) and Alex.

Image: Mike Lovett, Brandeis University.

I just wanted to let you know that Irene Pepperberg has several speaking engagements to promote her new book, Alex & Me: How a Scientist and a Parrot Discovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence -- and Formed a Deep Bond in the Process (scheduled release date: 28 October 2008). As you might remember, six months ago, I was given the opportunity to review an advance reading copy of several chapters of this book, which I favorably recommended at the time (I am looking forward to reading and reviewing the completed book as soon as it arrives). Anyway, she is traveling to several cities to promote the book and to raise money to continue her research. Thanks to one of my readers, I will be attending one of Pepperberg's two NYC appearances! This appearance is an interview by Robert Krulwich, who is the host of Nova Science Now, and regularly appears on NPR and is an ABC News correspondent [Irene's speaking schedule]. To say the least, I will definitely be writing about her appearance on my blog for all of you to read about.

grrlscientist Tue, 09/09/2008 - 15:28

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I'd be curious to hear if she mentions kea: I know there are studies on intelligence and problem-solving using kea as subjects.

Video Memorial of Alex The Parrot

grrlscientist — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 15:59:46 +0000

Video Memorial of Alex The Parrot

tags: Irene Pepperberg, Alex, African grey parrot, streaming video

Alex was a famous African grey parrot who could count to six, identify colors and even express frustration with repetitive scientific trials. He died about five weeks ago, after 30 years of helping researchers better understand the avian brain. This streaming video below the fold has a wonderful tribute to Alex and his many talents. [2:39]

grrlscientist Mon, 10/29/2007 - 11:59

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This is actually the first time I have listened to
Alex talk, after reading much about him over the years. Thank you for posting this tribute on your blog.

Ok, it was pretty good until they superimposed Einstien's hair onto Alex. Then I just started laughing. :D

I don't like how they describe Alex as some kind of parrot genius. He wasn't selected for high intelligence, he is just an average parrot who got to live in a very stimulating environment. There are likely to be lots of potentially smarter parrots out there being bored to death because their owners just leave them in a cage.

Irene actually emphasizes the fact that she chose Alex precisely because he was average, nothing special. She didn't want to get the criticism later that Alex wasn't representative of what a Grey parrot was capable of.

Memorial Reprint of Article About Alex on Seed Magazine

grrlscientist — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 11:13:20 +0000

Memorial Reprint of Article About Alex on Seed Magazine

tags: Alex, African grey parrot, Psittacus erithacus, cognition, learning, speech disabilities, Irene Pepperberg

Alex, the African grey parrot, Psittacus erithacus,
who worked with Irene Pepperberg for more than 30 years.

Image: Illustration by Andrew Kuo, Photograph by John Woo.

An article about Alex, the African grey parrot who worked with Irene Pepperberg, has been reprinted on the Seed magazine site. This piece was originally published in 2004 and reappears now as a memorial to Alex. It includes lovely images, such as the one above.

Alex is an African Grey parrot, but in all likelihood, he wasn't born in Africa. Like most birds in pet shops, he was probably bred as a "domestic" in North America, but that's all we know about Alex's early history. We don't know who his parents are or his exact birth date. Some of this mystery was appealing to Pepperberg in her search for the perfect specimen to test her theories about avian intelligence. She didn't want anyone thinking she'd picked a "super" bird that had been bred especially for smarts. In Pepperberg's hands, Alex (whose name stands for Avian Learning EXperiment) was going to show the world that parrots can do more than, well, parrot. Namely, they can mean what they say. If Polly wants a cracker, she really wants a cracker. Or, as Pepperberg explains it, birds can think. And not in the way you've seen your dog thinking when you catch him staring at the exact spot on the kitchen floor where you dropped a pot roast six months ago. According to Pepperberg, Alex has the cognitive abilities of a 6-year-old child. He can identify objects, colors, and shapes, and he's not just repeating what he hears. This is a substantial claim, given that Alex's brain is the size of a shelled walnut. [story].

Unfortunately, just like the LATimes piece, Seed also got the lifespan of this species wrong. "Congo" African grey parrots live approximately 50-60 years in captivity, okay? They do not live to be 90-100 years old. That's just an outlandish claim.

grrlscientist Thu, 09/13/2007 - 07:13

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I am glad to see a rebuttal here of the "big-brain" chauvanism that gives rise to disparaging stereotypes such as "bird brain." I was reading recently that the neuron packing in the brain of the European honeybee is much more efficient than in larger-brained animals, and the ability of this insect to navigate its way around is a clear manifestation of how well the miniscule bee brain works with about 100,000 or so neurons.