Abstract
Intelligent behavior is shaped by the abilities to store and manipulate information in visual working memory. Although humans and various non-human animals demonstrate similar storage capacities, the evolution of manipulation ability remains relatively unspecified. To what extent are manipulation limits unique to humans versus shared across species? Here, we compare behavioral signatures of manipulation ability demonstrated by human adults and 6-to-8-year-old children with that of an animal separated from humans by over 300 million years of evolution: a Grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus). All groups of participants completed a variant of the “Shell Game”, which required mentally updating the locations of varying set sizes of occluded objects that swapped places a number of times. The parrot not only demonstrated above-chance performance, but also outperformed children across all conditions. Indeed, the parrot’s accuracy was comparable to (and slightly better than) human adults’ over 12/14 set-size/number-of-swaps combinations, until four items were manipulated with 3–4 swaps, where performance decreased toward that of 6- to 8-year-olds. These results suggest that manipulation of visual working memory representations is an evolutionarily ancient ability. An important next step in this research program is establishing variability across species, and identifying the evolutionary origins (analogous or homologous) of manipulation mechanisms.
Highlights
We live in a dynamic world, where objects move across time and space, disappear from our line of sight, and undergo featural transformations
Much emphasis has been placed on delineating the origins of this storage capacity, with less focus placed on characterizing limits in visual working memory (VWM) manipulation
We presumed that Grey parrots likely possess some capacity to manipulate visual information, given environmental pressures placed on these birds in the wild and a neural architecture functionally homologous to those supporting human memory[10,11,13,14]
Summary
We live in a dynamic world, where objects move across time and space, disappear from our line of sight, and undergo featural transformations. We compare VWM manipulation capacity of a Grey parrot (Griffin) with that of human adults (n = 21) and 6-to-8- year old children (n = 21).
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
