Check this out. Five numbers appear on a screen in different locations. They remain visible for 210 milliseconds and then they are obscured. The subject must then touch the locations in increasing order of the numbers that appeared there. That’s pretty much impossible. Here’s a human subject who is highly trained and does an impressive job but still fails miserably.
Now check out how nonchalantly this chimpanzee does it.
I didn’t even know they could count. Note that the 5 numbers are random integers between 1 and 9. So the chimp is processing a binary relation in short-term memory, not to mention reading at a super-human rate. There are more videos here. I saw these at Colin Camerer’s talk last week at Arthur Robson‘s conference on the Biological Basis of Preferences.
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May 13, 2012 at 9:20 am
Arhur
Maybe what is missing is giving some food to the human on successful completion.
May 14, 2012 at 8:37 pm
Y. Shaban
I found that after the numbers appear if I close my eyes for 3 or 4 seconds I can “memorize” where the numbers are and get the order correct almost all the time. This compared to not having the order correct even once without closing my eyes.
Not sure if the researchers have looked into that. Although from the chimpanzee video it seems the chimps didn’t need any extra seconds at all, eyes open or closed.
May 19, 2012 at 7:12 am
How food can make human think faster?
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July 18, 2012 at 8:42 am
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