Chimps Do Better On Memory Test Than Humans

Chimps Do Better on Memory Test Than Humans
Do Better Than College Students on Tests
MALCOLM RITTER
AP Science Writer
NEW YORK Dec. 3, 2007


Never mind that TV show that asks if you're smarter than a fifth-
grader. Is your memory better than a young chimp's?

Maybe not.

Japanese researchers pitted young chimps against human adults in two
tests of short-term memory, and overall, the chimps won.

That challenges the belief of many people, including many scientists,
that "humans are superior to chimpanzees in all cognitive functions,"
said researcher Tetsuro Matsuzawa of Kyoto University.

"No one can imagine that chimpanzees - young chimpanzees at the age of
5 - have a better performance in a memory task than humans," he said
in a statement.

Matsuzawa, a pioneer in studying the mental abilities of chimps, said
even he was surprised. He and colleague Sana Inoue report the results
in Tuesday's issue of the journal Current Biology.

One memory test included three 5-year-old chimps who'd been taught the
order of Arabic numerals 1 through 9, and a dozen human volunteers.

They saw nine numbers displayed on a computer screen. When they
touched the first number, the other eight turned into white squares.
The test was to touch all these squares in the order of the numbers
that used to be there.

Results showed that the chimps, while no more accurate than the
people, could do this faster.

One chimp, Ayumu, did the best. Researchers included him and nine
college students in a second test.

This time, five numbers flashed on the screen only briefly before they
were replaced by white squares. The challenge, again, was to touch
these squares in the proper sequence.

When the numbers were displayed for about seven-tenths of a second,
Ayumu and the college students were both able to do this correctly
about 80 percent of the time.

But when the numbers were displayed for just four-tenths or two-tenths
of a second, the chimp was the champ. The briefer of those times is
too short to allow a look around the screen, and in those tests Ayumu
still scored about 80 percent, while humans plunged to 40 percent.

That indicates Ayumu was better at taking in the whole pattern of
numbers at a glance, the researchers wrote.

"It's amazing what this chimpanzee is able to do," said Elizabeth
Lonsdorf, director of the Lester E. Fisher Center for the Study and
Conservation of Apes at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. The center
studies the mental abilities of apes, but Lonsdorf didn't participate
in the new study.

She admired Ayumu's performance when the numbers flashed only briefly
on the screen.

"I just watched the video of that and I can tell you right now,
there's no way I can do it," she said. "It's unbelievable. I can't
even get the first two (squares)."

What's going on here? Even with six months of training, three students
failed to catch up to the three young chimps, Matsuzawa said in an e-
mail.

He thinks two factors gave his chimps the edge. For one thing, he
believes human ancestors gave up much of this skill over evolutionary
time to make room in the brain for gaining language abilities.

The other factor is the youth of Ayuma and his peers. The memory for
images that's needed for the tests resembles a skill found in
children, but which dissipates with age. In fact, the young chimps
performed better than older chimps in the new study. (Ayuma's mom did
even worse than the college students).

So the next logical step, Lonsdorf said, is to fix up Ayumu with some
real competition on these tests: little kids. ---


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