Giret Nicolas, Péron Franck, Lindová Jitka, Tichotová Lenka, Nagle Laurent, Kreutzer Michel, Tymr Frantisek, Bovet Dalila
Laboratoire d'Ethologie et Cognition Comparées, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre-La Défense, 200, avenue de la République-BSL, 92000 Nanterre, France.
Behav Processes. 2010 Oct;85(2):90-8. doi: 10.1016/j.beproc.2010.06.010. Epub 2010 Jun 30.
Some African grey parrots (Psittacus erithacus), the most famous being Pepperberg's parrot Alex, are able to imitate human speech and produce labels referentially. In this study, the aim was to teach ten African grey parrots from two laboratories to label items. Training three parrots from the first laboratory for several months with the Model/Rival method, developed by Pepperberg, in which two humans interact in front of the subject to demonstrate the use of a label, led to disappointing results. Similarly, seven parrots from the second laboratory, having been trained with several variants of Model/Rival attained little success. After the informal observation of the efficiency of other methods (i.e. learning to imitate labels either spontaneously or with specific learning methods and use of these labels referentially), four different teaching methods were tested with two birds: the Model/Rival; Repetition/Association which consisted of repeating a label and presenting the item only when the parrot produced the label; Intuitive in which the experimenter handled an item and repeated its name in front of the subject; Diffusion in which labels with either variable or flat intonation were played back daily to parrots. One bird learned three labels, one of which was used referentially, with the Repetition/Association method. He learned one label non-referentially with the Model/Rival but no labels were acquired using the other methods. The second bird did not learn any labels. This study demonstrates that different methods can be efficient to teach labels referentially and it suggests that rearing conditions and interindividual variability are important features when assessing learning ability of African grey parrots.
一些非洲灰鹦鹉（Psittacus erithacus），其中最著名的是佩珀伯格的鹦鹉亚历克斯，能够模仿人类语言并具有指代性地说出物品名称。在本研究中，目标是教会来自两个实验室的十只非洲灰鹦鹉说出物品名称。使用佩珀伯格开发的示范/竞争法对第一个实验室的三只鹦鹉进行了数月训练，即两个人在鹦鹉面前互动以演示名称的使用，但结果令人失望。同样，第二个实验室的七只鹦鹉接受了示范/竞争法的几种变体训练，也几乎没有成功。在对其他方法的有效性进行非正式观察后（即通过自发模仿或特定学习方法学习说出名称并具有指代性地使用这些名称），用两只鹦鹉测试了四种不同的教学方法：示范/竞争法；重复/联想法，即重复一个名称，仅在鹦鹉说出该名称时展示物品；直观法，即实验者拿着一个物品并在鹦鹉面前重复其名称；扩散法，即每天给鹦鹉播放语调可变或平稳的名称。一只鹦鹉通过重复/联想法学会了三个名称，其中一个具有指代性地使用。它通过示范/竞争法非指代性地学会了一个名称，但使用其他方法未学会任何名称。第二只鹦鹉没有学会任何名称。本研究表明，不同方法在教授具有指代性的名称时可能有效，并且表明饲养条件和个体差异在评估非洲灰鹦鹉的学习能力时是重要因素。
