Ever say that's so easy a monkey can do it? That isn't really insulting

[CrAz3D]

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/12/03/chimp.memory.ap/index.html

Granted the test that produced the "chimp is a champ" results is only 1 chimp v. 9 students, it's still fairly impressive.

But quotes like this suggest that chimps aren't really better.

Results showed that the chimps, while no more accurate than the people, could do this faster.

[Newby]

The uselessness of this article astounds me.

[CrAz3D]

You obviously don't read CNN enough.



Example:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/LIVING/personal/12/03/bad.kissers/index.html

[Blaze]

The uselessness of this article astounds me.

This is CNN!

Edit: wtf beaten to it. 

[Armin]

Japanese researchers pitted young chimps against human adults in tests of short-term memory, and overall, the chimps won.

Everyone knows the older you get, the worse your short term memory gets. If they want to be accurate at all, they need to control the age.

[iago]

Plus, the monkeys practiced for months to learn how to do it, whereas the students were just told to go.

Also, the test is essentially reaction time, the article says that the accuracy was roughly even but the monkeys were faster.

And finally, a chimp is not a monkey, it's an ape.

[MyndFyre]

Plus, it would be interesting to see how a 3- or 4-year old human could do.  It's well-documented that we have much more difficulty with the kind of spatial learning required for written language as we get older.

[Joe]

Plus, the monkeys practiced for months to learn how to do it, whereas the students were just told to go.

Also, the test is essentially reaction time, the article says that the accuracy was roughly even but the monkeys were faster.

And finally, a chimp is not a monkey, it's an ape.

Technically, the students also spent a lot of time practicing. The chimp was taught the Arabic digits 1-9 (for those who don't know, we use Arabic digits), and the students also knew them. The chimp wasn't at any advantage.

[MyndFyre]

That's not the issue though.  The issue is thought-clutter.

College students vs. chimps isn't a fair comparison of cognitive ability.  At least, not this task.

A person's brain has a lot of cognitive processes going on at once, and they compete with each other for processing time.  You also have a scheduler - this assigns tasks priority.

Can anyone think of things that might be more important to a college student than taking a psych eval?

It's likely the chimp was being rewarded with food or something else.  Gives the chimp high motivation!

And only one chimp?  The little voice in my head screams "Not statistically significant!  Not statistically significant!  Not statistically significant!"