Cats are able to remember connections between words and objects in the world without any reward.
How do we learn the meanings of words? The easiest way is to show a picture with the corresponding object along with the word, or write this word next to what it means. For small children who are just learning to speak, this is the best thing – this method is not suitable for all words, but it is quite possible to teach what an “apple”, “table” or “cat” is.
By the way, about cats. We once wrote that some cats know their nicknames: they distinguish them from other sounds that people pronounce. There are other experiments in which cats recognized people by name, that is, they learned the connection between the sounds of the name and the appearance of a particular person. Here, of course, you need to remember that cats often hear both their nicknames and the names of people on the occasion of dinner. That is, the nickname for them is just a nickname, and not just an invitation to the feeding trough – the researchers specifically checked this. The point is that learning names and nicknames is accompanied by a treat, which works as a reward.
Employees at Azuba University decided to find out if cats can associate words with objects without reward, just like that. The owners of twenty cats and eleven cats were given a test with animated pictures accompanied by nonsense “words,” that is, sequences of speech sounds similar to real words. (A similar test is used to test young children’s ability to form associations between what they hear and what they see.) The cats watched an animation in which two objects – a sun and a cloud – replaced each other every seven seconds; one “word” sounded several times in the sun, and another on the cloud. As soon as the cats were distracted from the screen, the video stopped. There were more than one or two such viewings, which is quite understandable, given the distractibility of cats. The viewing was not accompanied by any goodies.
After the training part there was a break, and then the cats were again offered to watch the same video. Only now in it the “words” sometimes changed places: the “word” for the cloud sounded when the sun was on the screen, and vice versa. Of course, the cats couldn’t tell the experimenters that something had gone wrong. But for such cases there is a usual “indicator of surprise” – a long, longer than usual look, because when something unusual and incomprehensible appears before our eyes, we try to look at it longer. Holding your gaze helps you understand what is going on in the minds of animals, as well as very young children who cannot speak.
In an article in Scientific Reports it is said that the cats looked at the screen for a long time when the “words” were swapped; Moreover, some cats even had dilated pupils, which also indicates increased interest and attention. In general, the cats were truly surprised by the changes. There was initially no doubt that they are, in principle, capable of connecting something with something else – all the behavior of cats suggests that their cognitive abilities should be quite decent. But here they were asked to associate things that seals had not often encountered throughout their evolution, that is, animated pictures and sounds of human speech, and the associations between both – let’s say this again – had to be learned without any reward. The cats succeeded, and who knows what else they might come up with simply out of love for pure knowledge.
Source: www.nkj.ru
