The mother chimps and the adult humans all played worse than the young chimpanzees, likely because of a phenomenon called "eidetic imagery." He explained that this is "a special memory capability to retain an accurate, detailed image of a complex scene or pattern." Many normal human children have the skill, which declines with age. While chimps in the wild obviously aren't playing computer games, they use the same skills to assess numbers of fruits ripening on trees, hierarchical positions within their troops, and to evaluate locations and numbers of enemies "in the bush at a glance." Matsuzawa theorizes there is a mental trade-off between memory and symbolization -- especially as it relates to language -- in humans. This may cause the apparent memory lapses later. James Anderson, a member of the Scottish Primate Research Group at the University of Stirling, told Discovery News that the new research "is impressive on several levels." "Of course there is the striking finding that immature chimpanzees outperform both adult chimpanzees and adult humans in the numerical sequence task," Anderson said. "This naturally leads us to speculate on the development of the cognitive abilities involved in this task, in terms not only of individual development but also species-typical abilities." Anderson added that the study is also an "excellent example of how good laboratory-based experiments can reveal abilities that would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to uncover through purely observational studies." Related Links: Jennifer Viegas' blog: Born Animal |
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