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Animal psychologist Irene Pepperberg bought Alex at a pet store while working as a researcher at Purdue University. One of the trainers models the desired student behavior, and is seen by the student as a rival for the other trainer’s attention. This technique helped Pepperberg succeed with Alex where other scientists had failed in facilitating two-way communication with parrots. In later years, Alex sometimes assumed the role of one of Pepperberg’s assistants by acting as the “model” and “rival” in helping to teach a fellow parrot in the lab. Alex sometimes practiced words when he was alone. Pepperberg did not claim that Alex could use “language”, instead saying that he used a two-way communications code. Alex had a vocabulary of over 100 words, but was exceptional in that he appeared to have understanding of what he said.
For example, when Alex was shown an object and asked about its shape, color, or material, he could label it correctly. Alex was said to have understood the turn-taking of communication and sometimes the syntax used in language. Alex could add, to a limited extent, correctly giving the number of similar objects on a tray. Pepperberg said that if he could not count, the data could be interpreted as his being able to estimate quickly and accurately the number of something, better than humans can.
If the researcher displayed irritation, Alex tried to defuse it with the phrase, “I’m sorry. If he said “Wanna banana”, but was offered a nut instead, he stared in silence, asked for the banana again, or took the nut and threw it at the researcher or otherwise displayed annoyance, before requesting the item again. When asked questions in the context of research testing, he gave the correct answer approximately 80 percent of the time. Pepperberg asked him, “What color three?
However, as Alex had been asked this question before, he seemed to have become bored. This kept occurring until Pepperberg said “Fine, what color five? This was said to suggest that parrots, like humans, get bored. Preliminary research also seems to indicate that Alex could carry over the concept of four blue balls of wool on a tray to four notes from a piano. Pepperberg was also training him to recognize the symbol “4” as “four”.
In July 2005, Pepperberg reported that Alex understood the concept of zero. Pepperberg was training Alex to recognize English graphemes, in the hope that he would conceptually relate an English written word with the spoken word. He could identify sounds made by two-letter combinations such as SH and OR. Alex’s death on 6 September 2007, at age 31, came as a surprise, as the average life span for a grey parrot in captivity is 45 years. Some academics are skeptical of Pepperberg’s findings, asserting without data or peer-reviewed publication concerning Alex’s data, that Alex’s communications is operant conditioning. Archived from the original on 25 September 2007. A Thinking Bird or Just Another Birdbrain?
Me: how a scientist and a parrot discovered a hidden world of animal intelligence and formed a deep bond in the process. Einstein of parrots was a feather in researcher’s cap”. An Interview with Alex, the African Grey Parrot. Talking with Alex: Logic and speech in parrots.
Bird Brain Dies After Years of Research”. Alex, a parrot that could count to six, identify colors and even express frustration with repetitive scientific trials, has died after 30 years of helping researchers better understand the avian brain. Alex the Parrot, an Apt Student, Passes Away”. Archived from the original on 29 April 2009.
