Posted on 12/13/2005 10:40:21 PM PST by MRMEAN
I drove into New Haven on a recent morning with a burning question on my mind. How did my daughter do against the chimpanzees?
A month before, I had found a letter in the cubby of my daughter Charlotte at her preschool. It was from a graduate student at Yale asking for volunteers for a psychological study. The student, Derek Lyons, wanted to observe how 3- and 4-year-olds learn. I was curious, so I got in touch. Mr. Lyons explained how his study might shed light on human evolution.
His study would build on a paper published in the July issue of the journal Animal Cognition by Victoria Horner and Andrew Whiten, two psychologists at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Dr. Horner and Dr. Whiten described the way they showed young chimps how to retrieve food from a box.
The box was painted black and had a door on one side and a bolt running across the top. The food was hidden in a tube behind the door. When they showed the chimpanzees how to retrieve the food, the researchers added some unnecessary steps. Before they opened the door, they pulled back the bolt and tapped the top of the box with a stick. Only after they had pushed the bolt back in place did they finally open the door and fish out the food.
Because the chimps could not see inside, they could not tell that the extra steps were unnecessary. As a result, when the chimps were given the box, two-thirds faithfully imitated the scientists to retrieve the food.
The team then used a box with transparent walls and found a strikingly different result. Those chimps could see that the scientists were wasting their time sliding the bolt and tapping the top. None followed suit...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
oops.
However at a certain age the chimps basically stop developing while the human kids just continue to go ...and go ....and go ...and go.
A very weak analogy would be like comparing the pace of ignition of a piece of wood with some kerosene sprinkled on it, versus the ignition of an entire forest. The piece of wood will catch fire far faster than the wooded area, but the wooded area will burn far greater and hotter than the piece of wood will.
Anyways ....just my $0.02.
Uh, right, oops. Right.
No flames yet. Too subtle.
There might be an apples-and-oranges situation here; they don't mention the age of the chimps and it's possible they were comparing adult chimps to immature humans. Most adult animals are pretty results-oriented and it's possible that immature chimps might have been more imitative (read: playful, and so willing to 'go along with the game').
We're just trying to ignore you.. ;o)
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