| • Science | • People | • Locations | • Timeline |
Irene Pepperberg is a professor at the University of Arizona, currently ( as of 2003) a visiting fellow at the MIT media lab in Boston, MA. She is well known for her comparative studies into the cognitive fundamentals of language and communication, and was one of the first to try to extend work on language learning in animals other than humans (exemplified by the Washoe project) to a bird species.
Although parrots have long been known for their capacities in vocal mimicry, Pepperberg set out to show that their vocal behaviour could have the characteristics of human language. She worked intensively with a single African Grey Parrot, Alex, and reported that he acquired a large vocabulary and used it in a sophisticated way, which is often described as like that of two year old child. Pepperberg and her colleagues have sought to show that Alex can differentiate meaning and syntax, so that his use of vocal communication is unlike the relatively inflexible forms of " instinctInstinct is the word used to describe inherent dispositions towards particular actions. Instincts are generally an inherited pattern of responses or reactions to certain kinds of situations. In humans, they are most easily observed in responses to emotionive" communicationAnimal communication is any behaviour on the part of one animal that has an effect on the current or future behaviour of another animal. The study of animal communication, called zoosemiotics (distinguishable as anthroposemiotics, the study of human commu that are widespread in the animal kingdom.
Although such results are always likely to be controversial, and working intensively with a single animal always incurs the risk of Clever HansClever Hans (in German, der Kluge Hans was a horse that was apparently trained to perform arithmetic and other intellectual tasks. Philosopher and psychologist Carl Stumpf formed a panel of 13 prominent scientists, known as the Hans Commission to study th effects, Pepperberg's work has strengthened the argument that humans do not hold the monopoly on the complex or semicomplex use of abstract communication.
From work with the single subject Alex, Pepperberg and her colleagues have gone on to study additional African Grey Parrots, and also parrots of other species. A final evaluation of the importance of her work will probably depend on the success of these attempts to generalise it to other individuals.
Irene Pepperberg is also active in wildlife conservation, especially in relation to parrots. She is currently studying the differences in avian and mammallian brainFor other articles about other subjects named brain see brain (disambiguation). In the anatomy of animals, the brain or encephalon is the supervisory center of the nervous system. Although the brain is usually cited as the supervisory center of vertebrate function.