MEET ALEX THE GREY PARROT
By Barbara Katz

You may wonder, how can this be true? Is this creature a real parrot or a cartoon character? He is quite real. Just an ordinary African Grey Parrot named Alex. But he lives an extraordinary life. Alex belongs to Dr. Irene Pepperberg of the University of Arizona in the United States. They are best friends and have worked together since 1977.

For example, Pepperberg shows Alex two blue wood blocks, three green wool felt balls, two red wood blocks, and three yellow wool felt balls and asks, "How many blue wood?" Alex must identify everything on the tray and decide which objects have the color and material mentioned in the question. A three-year-old human child might find it difficult to outsmart Alex on such questions. Of course, if Alex did not speak well, Pepperberg would not be able to find out what he is capable of learning or be able to test him on his knowledge. How did Dr. Pepperberg teach Alex to speak clearly and correctly label colors, shapes, materials, quantities and objects, including his food and the all-important shower?

Dr. Pepperberg’s research has its origins in the work of European scientists from the 1940's and 1970's who demonstrated objects with the appropriate labels. Much of the early research was done by ethologist Dietmar Todt. Todt was mostly interested in increasing his birds’ abilities to mimic vocalizations, but he did develop a new training technique: the model/rival system. Todt’s birds, however, could only repeat their part of the exchange. They never learned the questions, and they would respond only to the particular human who asked the question. Pepperberg was curious about the full potential of African Greys with regard to intelligence and decided to take Todt’s work and build on it.

Pepperberg made a few critical changes to Todt’s method that proved significant in preparing Alex for his role in the cognition studies. First, she modified the model/rival method to accommodate the theories of three additional scientists: Swiss Jean Piaget, an early twentieth century child psychologist; Russian L.S. Vygotsky, Piaget’s contemporary who studied, among other things, how deaf and retarded children learn; and American Albert Bandura whose studies in the 1960's and 1970's concerned the effects of social modeling (interactions) on learning. Bandura suggested that subjects need to practice, as well as observe, new behaviors. Vygotsky indicated that trainers must show the subject how to transfer a skill from a familiar to a new situation. They must make clear the similarities of the two situations. Piaget stressed the importance of continuous interaction between the subject and its environment. When you combine the work of Todt, Bandura, Vygotsky, Piaget and Pepperberg, you’ve got ALEX.

In Dr. Pepperberg’s version of model/rival training, one person first plays the trainer and a second person is the model/rival who demonstrates (or models) the correct responses to the question, and also competes with Alex (is his rival) for the attention of the trainer. A typical session might proceed as follows:

First, the trainer provides the social interactions that parrots experience in the wild. Why should that matter to Alex? Though Alex has lived his life in captivity, he is still a "WILD" bird. He is a product of millions of years of evolution that has shaped how he looks, sounds, behaves, eats and even how he thinks. He cannot be more than Nature has made him. He will never be less.

Secondly, by showing Alex the actual piece of blue paper and by allowing him to play with the paper that he has correctly labeled, he learns that the word has a different relationship to a three-dimensional object. This is called reference. The words refer to something that interests him. For example, Alex was taught the label "key" with the many types of keys. He learned that the label "key" can refer to a blue key, a red key, or a yellow key. It can be wood, metal or plastic. It can be large or small. If Pepperberg suddenly shows Alex a key he’s never seen before, he will recognize the shape of the object as a key. He has learned that the label "key" has its own reference; it is an object with a particular shape.