Paris: There are six baboons which can tell you that ‘four’ is a word and ‘ruof’ is not. Researchers gave training to six Guinea baboons to differentiate between real four-letter English words from non-words.
After about six weeks of training, the intelligent monkeys learned to distinguish between real words and non-words from a total of about 8,000 words. Their answers were almost 75 per cent right on average, while some scored 90 per cent, the researchers reported in the journal Science.
The aim of the study was more on exploring how a brain might learn to read than investigating intelligence of animals. Contrary to the prevailing theory, the study suggested that without having language, a brain could take the first step towards reading.
Scientist at the Aix-Marseille University in France trained six baboons by setting up nine booths in two trailers in the monkeys’ compartment. Each booth was equipped with computers and touch screens.
When in front of the screen, a baboon was confronted with a series of four-letter words and non-words, and they had to distinguish between them in order to bring a reward.
The scientists’ best guess as to how the animals were able to identify real words is that they learned “the statistical properties that distinguish words from non-words,” said Aix-Marseille’s Jonathan Grainger, who led the study.
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