Baboons Display 'Reading' Skills, Study Suggests; Monkeys Identify Specific Combinations of Letter

Baboons Display 'Reading' Skills, Study Suggests; Monkeys Identify Specific Combinations of Letters in Words

www.sciencedaily.com

ScienceDaily (Apr. 16, 2012) — Learning to read is not just to do with speech, but also with the ability to recognize and memorize regular patterns among the letters that make up words, according to a new study on baboons. New results show that monkeys identify specific combinations of letters in words and detect anomalies -- a capacity that certainly existed before speech.

(visit the link for the full news article)


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www.sciencemag.org

*Edit To Add:

Skilled readers use information about which letters are where in a word (orthographic information) in order to access the sounds and meanings of printed words. We asked whether efficient processing of orthographic information could be achieved in the absence of prior language knowledge. To do so, we trained baboons to discriminate English words from nonsense combinations of letters that resembled real words. The results revealed that the baboons were using orthographic information in order to efficiently discriminate words from letter strings that were not words. Our results demonstrate that basic orthographic processing skills can be acquired in the absence of preexisting linguistic representations.
www.sciencemag.org...

I don't know what to add or what to challenge in the information I've just relayed and shared with my fellow ATSers. I found the article and supportive evidence to be intriguing and interesting to say the least. That language is not just or only linguistically anchored in the psychi, but also the visual stimuli can constitute a transference of information with animals also is something that peeked my curiosity. I realize, and would like to stress, this does not necessarily mean that baboons can read and are totally literate, but neither are we according to the grammar police. What it does theorize is happening is a precurser and tool/skill used in communication and language which is being demonstrated by baboons.

I'm still internalizing this. Just read about it in the last half hour or so.

www.sciencedaily.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

All apologies ATSers. It would seem the full paper on the whole study that was submitted is pay per view.
www.sciencemag.org...

reply to post by ILikeStars


Woah! Cool stuff.

Wonder what this means for teaching younger children to learn how to read.

And from what I've seen it seems quite a few also have internet access...

reply to post by Hawking

And from what I've seen it seems quite a few also have internet access...

I LAUGH, and LAUGH and LAUGH at that comment!!!! ( )


OK....now TO the OP: Yes...a nice find, and worthy of a thread for discussion (so far)......

Nice thing you have "discovered"........

I watched the video.......and wellllllll.....as much as I WANT the Baboons to actually be able to "read"........I just did not see that....I WANT to see it!!! (but not...maybe.....in orangutans.................I do NOT.....repeat do NOT 'trust' them!!!!

(WATCH OUT for the Orangs!!!! (MARK...MY words,,,,Watch Out!!!)


Yeah...OK, OJ....just (maybe) being a bit.....well....is ""silly""" a word?? ( )...................................

Wonderful thread. No surprise they make that a pay for view article. They don't want the average person to read it.

While the apes are getting smarter, humans are getting dumber. Excellent find; nature (created by God) never ceases to amaze me.