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Half a century ago, one of the hottest questions in science was whether humans could teach animals to talk. Scientists tried using sign language to converse with apes and trained parrots to deploy growing English vocabularies.<\/p>\n
The work quickly attracted media attention \u2014 and controversy. The research lacked rigor, critics argued, and what seemed like animal communication could simply have been wishful thinking, with researchers unconsciously cuing their animals to respond in certain ways.<\/em><\/p>\n In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the research fell out of favor. \u201cThe whole field completely disintegrated,\u201d <\/strong>said Irene Pepperberg, a comparative cognition researcher at Boston University, who became known for her work with an African gray parrot named Alex<\/a>.<\/p>\n Today, advances in technology and a growing appreciation for the sophistication of animal minds have renewed interest in finding ways to bridge the species divide. <\/strong>Pet owners are teaching their dogs to press \u201ctalking buttons\u201d<\/a> and zoos are training their apes to use touch screens.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In a cautious new paper<\/a>, a team of scientists outlines a framework for evaluating whether such tools might give animals new ways to express themselves. The research is designed \u201cto rise above some of the things that have been controversial in the past,\u201d said Jennifer Cunha, a visiting research associate at Indiana University.<\/p>\n The paper, which is being presented at a science conference on Tuesday, focuses on Ms. Cunha\u2019s parrot, an 11-year-old Goffin\u2019s cockatoo named Ellie. Since 2019, Ms. Cunha has been teaching Ellie to use an interactive \u201cspeech board,\u201d a tablet-based app that contains more than 200 illustrated icons, corresponding to words and phrases including \u201csunflower seeds,\u201d \u201chappy\u201d and \u201cI feel hot.\u201d When Ellie presses on an icon with her tongue, a computerized voice speaks the word or phrase aloud.<\/p>\n In the new study, Ms. Cunha and her colleagues did not set out to determine whether Ellie\u2019s use of the speech board amounted to communication. Instead, they used quantitative, computational methods to analyze Ellie\u2019s icon presses to learn more about whether the speech board had what they called \u201cexpressive and enrichment potential.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cHow can we analyze the expression to see if there might be a space for intention or communication?\u201d Ms. Cunha said. \u201cAnd then, secondly, the question is could her selections give us an idea about her values, the things that she finds meaningful?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The scientists analyzed nearly 40 hours of video footage, collected over seven months, of Ellie\u2019s using the speech board. Then, they compared her icon presses to several simulations of a hypothetical speech board user who was selecting icons at random.<\/p>\n \u201cThey were ultimately all significantly different at multiple points from the real data,\u201d said Nikhil Singh, a doctoral student at M.I.T. who created the models. \u201cThis virtual user that we had wasn\u2019t able to fully capture what the real Ellie did when using this tablet.\u201d<\/p>\n In other words, whatever Ellie was doing, she did not seem to be simply mashing icons at random. The design of the speech board, including icon brightness and location, could not fully explain Ellie\u2019s selections either, the researchers found.<\/p>\n Determining whether or not Ellie\u2019s selections were random \u201cis a very good place to start,\u201d said <\/strong>Federico Rossano, a comparative cognition researcher at the University of California, San Diego, who was not involved in the research. \u201cThe problem is that randomness is very unlikely.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Just because Ellie was not hitting icons randomly does not mean that she was actively and deliberately trying to communicate her true wants or feelings, Dr. Rossano said. She may simply have been repeating sequences she learned during training. \u201cIt\u2019s like a vending machine,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can learn to push a sequence of numbers and get a certain type of reward. It doesn\u2019t mean that you\u2019re thinking about what you\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n To further probe the possibilities, the research team then looked for signs of what it called \u201ccorroboration.\u201d If Ellie selected the apple icon, did she eat the apple that she was given? If she selected a reading-related icon, did she engage with the book for at least a minute?<\/p>\n \u201cYou can hand something to a bird, and they\u2019ll throw it or they\u2019ll touch it,\u201d Ms. Cunha said. \u201cBut for us it was about, Did she engage with it?\u201d<\/p>\n Not all of Ellie\u2019s selections could be evaluated in this way; it was impossible for the researchers to determine, for instance, whether she was truly feeling happy or hot in any given moment. But of the nearly 500 icon presses that could be assessed, 92 percent were corroborated by Ellie\u2019s subsequent behavior.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s clear that they have a good correlation there,\u201d said Dr. Pepperberg, who was not involved in the research.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But demonstrating that Ellie truly understands what the icons mean will require additional testing, she said, suggesting that the researchers try deliberately bringing Ellie the wrong object <\/strong>to see how she responds. \u201cIt\u2019s just another control to make sure that the animal really has this understanding of what the label represents,\u201d Dr. Pepperberg said.<\/p>\n Finally, the researchers tried to assess whether the speech board was serving as a form of enrichment for Ellie by analyzing the types of icons she selected most frequently.<\/p>\n \u201cIf it\u2019s a means to an end, what is the end?\u201d said R\u00e9becca Kleinberger, an author of the paper and a researcher at Northeastern University, where she studies how animals interact with technology. \u201cIt does seem like there was a bias toward social activity or activity that means remaining in interaction with the caretaker.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Roughly 14 percent of the time, Ellie selected icons for food, drinks or treats, the researchers found. On the other hand, about 73 percent of her selections corresponded to activities that provided social or cognitive enrichment, such as playing a game, visiting another bird or simply communicating with Ms. Cunha. Ellie also initiated the use of the speech board 85 percent of the time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cEllie the cockatoo interacted consistently with her device, suggesting that it remained engaging and reinforcing for her to do so over several months,\u201d said Amalia Bastos, a comparative cognition researcher at Johns Hopkins University, who was not an author of the paper.<\/p>\n The study has limitations. There\u2019s a limit to what scientists can extrapolate from a single animal, and it\u2019s difficult to rule out the possibility that Ms. Cunha might have been unconsciously cuing Ellie to respond in certain ways, outside experts said. But scientists also praised the researchers\u2019 systematic approach and modest claims.<\/p>\n \u201cThey are not saying, \u2018Can the parrot talk?\u2019\u201d Dr. Rossano said. \u201cThey are saying, \u2018Can this be used for enrichment?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Dr. Bastos agreed. \u201cThis work is a crucial first step,\u201d she said. It\u2019s also an example of how the field has changed, for the better, since the 1970s.<\/p>\n \u201cResearchers currently working in the area are not bringing the same assumptions to the table,\u201d Dr. Bastos said. \u201cWe don\u2019t expect animals to understand or use language in the way that humans do.\u201d Instead, she added, scientists are interested in using communication tools to \u201cimprove the welfare of captive animals and their relationships to their caretakers.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n