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Higher-order semantic structures in an African Grey parrot’s vocalizations: evidence from the hyperspace analog to language (HAL) model

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Abstract

Previous research has described the significant role that social interaction plays in both the acquisition and use of speech by parrots. The current study analyzed the speech of one home-raised African Grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus erithacus) across three different social contexts: owner interacting with parrot in the same room, owner and parrot interacting out of view in adjacent rooms, and parrot home alone. The purpose was to determine the extent to which the subject’s speech reflected an understanding of the contextual substitutability (e.g., the word street can be substituted in context for the word road) of the vocalizations that comprised the units in her repertoire (i.e., global co-occurrence of repertoire units; Burgess in Behav Res Methods Instrum Comput 30:188–198, 1998; Lund and Burgess in Behav Res Methods Instrum Comput 28:203–208, 1996). This was accomplished via the human language model hyperspace analog to language (HAL). HAL is contextually driven and bootstraps language “rules” from input without human intervention. Because HAL does not require human tutelage, it provided an objective measure to empirically examine the parrot’s vocalizations. Results indicated that the subject’s vocalization patterns did contain global co-occurrence. The presence of this quality in this nonhuman’s speech may be strongly indicative of higher-order cognitive skills.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Dorothy Fragaszy, Michael Covington, James C. Kaufman, Stephen M. Shellman of Strategic Analysis Enterprises, Inc., Aaron Seitz, Khaleel Razak, Genet Tulgetske, Dominic Cicchetti, Matt Riggs, and Robert Rosenthal. Additionally, they would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers on the paper, for going above and beyond the call of duty. Lastly, we also thank Betty Jean Craige and Cosmo, without whom this study would have been impossible.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, California State University, San Bernardino, 5500 University Parkway, San Bernardino, CA, 92407, USA

    Allison B. Kaufman

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Georgia, 125 Baldwin Street, Athens, GA, 30602, USA

    Erin N. Colbert-White

  3. Department of Psychology, University of California, Riverside, 900 University Ave, Riverside, CA, 92521, USA

    Curt Burgess

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  1. Allison B. Kaufman
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  2. Erin N. Colbert-White
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Correspondence to Allison B. Kaufman.

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Statement of Research Integrity:

All experiments described here comply fully with United States law. Data collection procedures were approved by the University of Georgia IACUC (Approval #A2007-10142).

Part of the work detailed here was done to fulfill the requirements of a dissertation by ABK in the Department of Neuroscience at the University of California, Riverside. During much of the time while data were being analyzed, ABK was supported by a Dissertation Year grant from the University of California, Riverside. In addition, some of the work discussed here was done to fulfill the requirements of a Masters thesis for ECW in the Department of Psychology at the University of Georgia.

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Kaufman, A.B., Colbert-White, E.N. & Burgess, C. Higher-order semantic structures in an African Grey parrot’s vocalizations: evidence from the hyperspace analog to language (HAL) model. Anim Cogn 16, 789–801 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-013-0613-3

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