Chimpanzee Memory Test

[jts]

3 minutes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJAH4ZJBiN8

[Dglgmut]

I want to see this monkey play chess vs Magnus Carlsen. He's supposed to have a super human memory as well.

[william.scherk]

3 minutes

Yes. You get a small piece of apple (treated with BT) for your ability to hit some buttons. If you watch

, Jerry, you can see it took the star pupil quite some time to get to the level of proficiency displayed above (that's right, over a year of practice).

For those who think less like a chimp (mmmmm, BT apple) and more like a human (I can read and you can't), here is the paper that claims something extraordinary about Chimp memory:

Inoue, S. and Matsuzaka, T., (2007). Working memory of numerals in chimpanzees. Current Biology 17 No. 23 [Full text]

From the Youtube description of the Nat Geo video poked out by our resident Chimp:

NOTE: The accuracy of the findings presented in this video, and this study itself, has been disputed.

See the links below for more information:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Paper: Silberberg, A, & Kearns, D. (2009). Memory for the order of briefly presented numerals in humans as a function of practice . Animal Cognition, 12(2), 405-407.
► http://www.springerl...42v2702r60u481/

Letter: Cook, P, & Wilson, M. (2010). In practice, chimp memory study flawed. Science, 328(5983), 1228.
► http://www.sciencema...key=d814b702...

-- From a second Cook and Wilson paper abstract (Do young chimpanzees have extraordinary working memory?):

Do chimpanzees have better spatial working memory than humans? In a previous report, a juvenile chimpanzee outperformed 3 university students on memory for briefly displayed digits in a spatial array (Inoue & Matsuzawa, 2007). The authors described these abilities as extraordinary and likened the chimpanzee's performance to eidetic memory. However, the chimpanzee received extensive practice on a non-time-pressured version of the task; the human subjects received none. Here we report that, after adequate practice, 2 university students substantially outperformed the chimpanzee. There is no evidence for a superior or qualitatively different spatial memory system in chimpanzees.

One more visual treat for you, Jerry -- Chimpanzee Porn! Not quite as sexy as your cousins poking at a screen, but hey.

Edited October 21, 2012 by william.scherk

[BaalChatzaf]

I want to see this monkey play chess vs Magnus Carlsen. He's supposed to have a super human memory as well.

An ape, not a monkey.

Ba'al Chatzaf