Thanks for that Nikki.
I guess the people at Parenting magazine thought the findings of the study were pretty funny, and that they would give their readers a (cheap) laugh. But of course, that first question that springs to mind is: "Smarter at
what??"The experiment was not about overall intelligence, but rather timing an individual's ability at self-recognition. i.e.:
In this experiment, pigeons could discriminate video images that reflect their movements even with a 5-7 second delay from video images that don’t reflect their movements. This ability is higher than an average 3-year-old human's. According to a research by Prof. Hiraki of the University of Tokyo, 3-year-olds have difficulty recognizing their self-image with only a 2 second delay.The pigeon may be better at self-recognition than the baby human (but what a long way the baby human has to go! The pigeon... not so much
) - but that doesn't mean the pigeon is
smarter. You only have to spend a little time chatting to an average 3-year-old to be convinced of that. Surely the ability to speak and understand language deserves the "smart" tag more than the ability to recognize oneself
at speed (did you notice? The 3-year-old can still recognize himself... just not as quickly).
The findings of the study are not that surprising actually, when you consider that babies' brains process information very inefficiently. The very young brain just has too many neural pathways and not enough experience to know exactly which direction to send information in. This is after all why the process of pruning takes place (see
http://www.brillbaby.com/early-learning/science-early-learning.php). Apparently, the processing speed of the human brain peaks at around age 12. So give the 3-year-old a break!
I'm sure the scientists who conducted this experiment never meant anyone to conclude that a pigeon is smarter than a 3-year-old human. It's just that the media jump on findings like this and spin them in such a way that will catch the reader's attention.
It certainly caught all of our attention!
Digg
