“Memory for the Order of Briefly Presented Numerals in Humans As a Function of Practice”, Alan Silberberg, David Kearns2008-12-30 (Algernon’s Law, DNB, animal psych; backlinks; similar)⁠:

Inoue & Matsuzawa2007 showed that with an accuracy of ~79%, the juvenile chimpanzee, Ayumu, could recall the position and order of a random subset of 5 Arabic numerals 1–9 when those numerals were presented for only 210 ms on a computer touch screen before being masked with white squares. None of 9 humans working on the same task approached this level of accuracy. Inoue & Matsuzawa2007 claimed this performance difference was evidence of a memorial capacity in young chimpanzees that was superior to that seen in adult humans.

While the between-species performance difference they report is apparent in their data, so too is a large difference in practice on their task: Ayumu had many sessions of practice on their task before terminal performances were measured; their human subjects had none.

The present report shows that when two humans are given practice in the Inoue & Matsuzawa2007 memory task, their accuracy levels match those of Ayumu.

See Also:

• On the Working Memory of Humans and Great Apes: Strikingly Similar or Remarkably Different?

• The Structure of Individual Differences in the Cognitive Abilities of Children and Chimpanzees § Table 1. Primate Cognition Test Battery: Description of Tasks and Mean Proportion (With Standard Deviation) of Correct Responses by Chimpanzees and Human Children

• The Structure of Individual Differences in the Cognitive Abilities of Children and Chimpanzees

• The Effect of Practice in the Case of a Purely Intellectual Function

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