The Alex Studies: Cognitive and Communicative Abilities of Grey Parrots (Hardcover)

by Irene Maxine Pepperberg (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
When Irene Pepperberg, a professor at the University of Arizona, says goodnight, she typically hears the reply "Bye. I'm gonna go eat dinner. I'll see you tomorrow." Though the response itself is not unusual, the source is, for it comes from Alex, a gray parrot, Pepperberg's main research subject for the past 22 years. That parrots can talk is well known; what Pepperberg set out to study was their cognitive abilities. By teaching the bird the meaning--not just the sound--of words in order to communicate, she hoped to discover how his brain worked. She exhaustively details her fascinating results in The Alex Studies.

Pepperberg bought Alex--a parrot of average intelligence and without lofty pedigree or training--from a pet store when he was 1. Since working with Pepperberg, he has developed a 100-word vocabulary and can identify 50 different objects, recognizing quantities up to six, distinguishing seven colors and five shapes, and understanding the difference between big and small, same and different, over and under. He can tell you, for instance, that corn is yellow even if there is no corn in view, as well as correctly select the square object among various shapes and identify it verbally. What this all means, stresses Pepperberg, is that Alex is not merely parroting but actually thinking; he bases answers on reason rather than instinct or mimicry.

Though the anecdotes are rich and Alex makes a lively subject, this is principally a research paper relying on intricate details and a prodigious amount of data (the notes and references alone run to 79 pages). This is not light reading, particularly for the layperson. Still, The Alex Studies manages to be more than a valuable contribution to science, for in providing ample evidence of our similarities to other creatures, the book ultimately calls into question the concept of human supremacy over the animal kingdom. Pepperberg's stated goal is "to provoke awareness in humans that animals have capacities that are far greater than we were once led to expect, and to remind us that all we need to examine these capacities are some enlightened research tools." She has provided such tools in this seminal work. --Shawn Carkonen

Review
For researchers in the field of animal cognition, Pepperberg brings together in a well organized form 20 years of her work with Grey parrots. In detailing the training and remarkable achievements of Alex and the other birds in Pepperberg's lab, The Alex Studies makes it clear that parrots are capable of much more than 'parroting' or mechanically mimicking what they hear. But this book makes a much greater contribution. It provides a general integrative framework for the larger field of animal cognition, providing much needed links between important natural behavior selected for by evolutionary processes and theories and data from human cognitive development. -- Thomas R. Zentall, University of Kentucky

Her work is new and important. She's done groundbreaking experiments, and bringing them together in a panoramic view is a great service. -- The New York Times Book Review, Bernd Heinrich

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (January 21, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 067400051X
• ISBN-13: 978-0674000513
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #993,822 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

62 of 65 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential resource for anyone interested in animal cognition, February 11, 2000

By	lois levin (waban, ma USA) - See all my reviews

This is essential reading for anyone interested in animal cognition. Dr. Pepperberg reviews her two decades of careful, systematic work with one African gray parrot and provides a detailed picture of the evolution of her ideas, methodologies and truly mind-boggling data. This is a well-written, easy to follow, well-organized account of her scientific work, of which most people have only had a brief glimpse (either in the press or from documentary films on PBS and the Discovery Channel).

The public is becoming increasingly aware of the complexity of animal minds, and I predict that this book will remain an excellent resource for years to come; it not only explain's the writer's seminal contribution to this fascinating interdisciplinary field, it also provides an historical context and theoretical rationale for the work of many other scientists studying language, cognition and animal behavior.

39 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars No parrot jokes please, May 17, 2002

By	"michaeleve" (Miami, Florida) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

I can almost hear Irene Pepperberg saying that to us as she describes the significance of THE ALEX STUDIES. She herself offers a few humorous anecdotes about Alex, but for the most part there is definitely nothing funny about this book. It's written in a deliberately prosaic style for the following reasons. The very tendency for the media and general public to treat Alex as simply the "talking parrot", when in reality his vocalizations represent something much more important in terms of animal cognition and communication. Also stemming from the fact that her findings about bird cognition are so significant, Pepperberg in making her case to scientific colleagues, writes with them in mind. She is incredibly detailed in describing her experiments and the controls used. This is in order to avoid the possibility of cueing and thus comparisons to "clever Hans"; she wants to remove the possibility of persons saying the evidence is that most dreaded scientific epithet - merely "anecdotal". The book is replete with references and Pepperberg places them in the body of her text instead of as footnotes. The book is not a smooth read and only a scientist could describe it as "a delightful and easy read" as ethologist Marc Bekoff says on the cover. This is not a popular science book. But equally it takes an evoltionary biologist and ornithologist to see the "groundbreaking" significance of the book as Bernd Heinrich does.

Where does that leave us, the general reading public? If you take it in small pecks (couldn't resist one bird metaphor) you will be rewarded by some incredible insights into the cognitive powers of animals. We learn of abilities that scientists said perhaps (and that's a capital "P") resided only in Great Apes. Never was it imagined that birds possesed them. Pepperberg spends chapters discussing different capabilities such as numeric cognition, categorization, and word comprehension. Alex responded to Pepperberg's questions about "what color?" "what shape?" and "how many?" with appropriate answers. By far the most interesting responses were Alex's answers to conceptual problems. When asked "what's different" Alex showed he understood the concept of relativity by answering "larger".

The traditional view was that we know that animals are not sentient. Pepperberg's experiments show that what we "know" about animal cognition is not that much at all. How else can it be. Science has a history of a few hundred years and it was not that very long ago that we "knew" that the earth was flat or that it was at the center of the universe. Cognitive Ethology (the study of animal intelligence) is less than a generation old. Perhaps he's not the best source to quote since he's from a comedy, but that man in black, Tommie Lee Jones as "K" was absolutely right when he said "just imagine what we'll know tomorrow."

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Meticulous, July 31, 2001

By A Customer

One of the preconceived notions I had before reading this book was that the quality of research would be rather soft around the edges... Sort of "feel good pseudo-science"... I was pleasantly surprised when I learned how meticulous and critical Pepperberg had obviously been in the course of her research. By not being afraid to challenge the traditional beliefs of animal cognition as well as boldy examining the potential pitfalls of her own approach, Pepperberg has delivered a compelling and meticulous body of scientific research that stands on its own. Pseudo-science? Definitely not. Feel good? Well, since I'm a parrot "owner" as well as always being fascinated by the subject of cognition, this book was a great read for me. The one downfall to all of this is that I'm constantly annoying my wife by trying to get her to participate in model-rival training sessions with our own African Grey. The bird, however, indulges me... Im sure he considers my efforts quite amusing.