For over 35 years, I have examined Grey parrot cognition via a modeling technique, whereby birds are trained to use elements of English speech referentially, so they can be questioned vocally, much like young children. The oldest bird, Alex, labeled >50 objects, seven colors, five shapes, quantities to eight, three categories (color, shape, material) and used no, come here, wanna go X, and want Y (X, Y being appropriate location or item labels) intentionally. He combined labels to identify, request, comment on, or refuse >150 items and to alter his environment. He understood concepts of category, relative size, quantity, presence or absence of similarity/difference in attributes, showed label comprehension and a zero-like concept; he demonstrated some understanding of phonological awareness and a numerical competence more like that of young children than other nonhumans. He could be queried about optical illusions in ways directly comparable to humans. Younger birds are acquiring similar competence.
CITATION STYLE
Pepperberg, I. M. (2014). Interspecies communication with grey parrots: A tool for examining cognitive processing. In Biocommunication of Animals (Vol. 9789400774148, pp. 213–232). Springer Netherlands. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7414-8_12
Mendeley helps you to discover research relevant for your work.