http://www.theage.com.au/world/study-shows-monkey-see-monkey-do-20110429-1e0rd.html
Study shows monkey see, monkey do April 30, 2011 The recall ability of monkeys resembles that of humans. Photo: Ben Rushton Monkeys have a human-like ability to recall shapes from memory and ''draw'' them on a computer screen, a study has shown. The animals' memory skills go beyond simply recognising previously seen images. Unlike recognition, recall demonstrates an ability to remember things not present ''at the moment''. It is necessary for planning and imagining, and contributes to complex social behaviour and thinking skills. Scientists showed that five rhesus monkeys could reproduce simple figures on a touch screen from memory. The shapes included two or three boxes in a grid. When they were shown part of a shape, the monkeys had to ''draw'' in the rest of the image by touching the right locations. Lead researcher Dr Benjamin Basile, from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, said: ''The ability of monkeys to recall these shapes flexibly suggests that they might be able to recollect other types of information that would be useful to them in the wild. ''It's exciting to speculate that they may be able to recollect the appearance of monkeys they know, what favourite foods look like, or the path they would have to take to get to a water source.'' The findings were published yesterday in the journal Current Biology. They suggest that recall ability does not depend on language and may have been present in the common ancestor of monkeys and humans 30 million years ago. Like humans, the monkeys remembered less in recall than in recognition tests. Recall performance also deteriorated slowly over time. Importantly, the animals were able to transfer their memory skill to novel shapes and not only those shapes they had seen during training. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ Post message: prole...@egroups.com Subscribe : proletar-subscr...@egroups.com Unsubscribe : proletar-unsubscr...@egroups.com List owner : proletar-ow...@egroups.com Homepage : http://proletar.8m.com/Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: proletar-dig...@yahoogroups.com proletar-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: proletar-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
