New Symbols
Premack was able to demonstrate that Sarah could understand how to decode a symbol stream after training. First she had to learn the token name-of and then learn that some new, but real objects had the name-of fig token1 and crackerjack token2.
She learned
- Real fig name-of fig token1
and
- Real crackerjack name-of crackerjack token2.
She was tested with
- fig token1 "?" Real crackerjack
which she answered correctly with
- fig token1 Not name-of Real crackerjack
Finally, with the trainer placing a ripe fig on the table, and the tokens fig token1, crackerjack token2, give, Mary, Sarah, orange, banana, Sarah produced the new sentence
- Mary give fig token1 Sarah
and with the trainer placing a crackerjack on the table, Sarah produced the new sentence
- Mary give crackerjack token2 Sarah
Read more about this topic: The Mind Of An Ape
Famous quotes containing the word symbols:
“Many older wealthy families have learned to instill a sense of public service in their offspring. But newly affluent middle-class parents have not acquired this skill. We are using our children as symbols of leisure-class standing without building in safeguards against an overweening sense of entitlement—a sense of entitlement that may incline some young people more toward the good life than toward the hard work that, for most of us, makes the good life possible.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“The use of symbols has a certain power of emancipation and exhilaration for all men. We seem to be touched by a wand, which makes us dance and run about happily, like children. We are like persons who come out of a cave or cellar into the open air. This is the effect on us of tropes, fables, oracles, and all poetic forms. Poets are thus liberating gods.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)