Our companion parrots are wonderful…but they are not “fids.” The topic was brought home to me several months ago when a paper was published (Roubalová et al., 2024) that compared the vocabularies of pet African grey parrots to those of young toddlers. The authors argued that the birds and children had the same types of linguistic input because the human owners treated their birds like “fids” (feathered kids) and that any of the numerous observed differences in output were a consequence of inherent differences in the two species. I strongly begged to differ, and wrote a commentary, critiquing the study (Pepperberg, 2024).
My point was that as much as we care for our companion parrots and try to provide the best possible environments for them, both physically and psychologically, we don’t—and very likely can’t and shouldn’t—treat them just as we treat children. Even my parrot Alex, who was raised in an environment as close to that of a toddler as possible within a laboratory situation, did not receive all the enrichments common to a child (Pepperberg, 1999). And although his repertoire and use of human speech was exceptional, it still was limited by the input he received, which was shaped by our scientific needs.
So, let me start with the results of the study I am critiquing. I cite Roubalová et al., 2024, with my own underlining: “Children use significantly more object labels, activity and situation labels, and emotional expressions, while parrots produce significantly more conversational expressions, greetings, and multiword utterances in general. These differences could reflect a strong link between learning spoken words and understanding the underlying concepts, an ability seemingly unique to human children (and absent in parrots), but also different communicative goals of the two species.”
I argue, instead, that the differences occurred because of the impoverished input received by the parrots compared to that of the children, and—specifically—that the lack of concepts in the parrots was a consequence of the type of training they were given. What was, however, quite impressive to me was the incredible extent of learning achieved by the parrots despite the impoverished input they received!
What is “Impoverished Input ?”
So, what do I mean by “impoverished input”? Without going into all the details present in my commentary (which is freely available; see below), I’ll quickly summarize some of the points:
- The owners claimed they communicated with their parrots on average ~2 hrs day, with another ~2 hrs of cuddling and play. For very young children, that level of interaction would be considered neglect.
- The parrots were learning a heterspecific code—human speech, rather than their species-specific parrot communication system—which meant they needed specific instruction in the concepts underlying the speech, which they did not receive.
- Children receive targeted, repetitive sentence frames—speech such as “Oooh, here’s your ball!”; “Look, it’s a bouncy ball”; “It’s a big, red ball”; “You dropped the little green ball!”—which introduce a label for an object along with various attributes in the presence of the physical item, making the object-label connection clear and introducing labels for attributes.
- These sentence frames also involve joint attention, where the speaker and listener are carefully attending to that object so that there is no confusion about the subject of the speech.
- Parents maintain a running commentary throughout the entire day with their children, talking about food being eaten, clothing being worn, the weather outside, etc.
- Parents actively teach their children labels for body parts.
- Children are given meaningful choices that introduce new labels (“Do you want an apple or an orange for dessert?”); the child learns the consequence of uttering one label versus another. Parrots, in contrast, are generally given a variety of toys and foods in their cages without any specific interaction.
- Children are encouraged and taught to ask questions as a means to acquire new knowledge. [Note: Alex did learn to question us from being taught via the Model/Rival protocol, and learned new labels by asking us about novel objects, colors, etc. (Pepperberg, 1999).]
- Parents recognize and label emotions in children far more than in their parrot companions.
- Parents read books to children, pointing to, expanding upon, and labeling relevant information.
- Parents often co-watch educational TV with their children (e.g., Sesame Street), again, emphasizing and labeling relevant information.
- Parents (or other caretakers) are rarely very far from their toddlers, unlike their interactions with their parrots, thus farewell and greeting behaviors are less important for the children.
- Parents expect children’s speech to become more complex and so alter their input as the children age; owners have little expectation for increasing complexity for parrots with age; thus parrots continue to hear only a simplified set of vocal phrases.
An additional way of looking at the differences between parrots and children is to view the parrots as though they were actually learning a second language (apropos of my point 2 above). We know that input needed for successful learning of a second language must be much clearer and relevant than for a first language, and that simply hearing a second language generally provides insufficient input for acquiring that language with full meaning. The learner might garner a general sense of a phrase and context in which to use it, but not truly understand the meaning of the words. [Think of a human learning to say “Comment allez-vous?” in greeting…they might think it is one long word, and have no idea that the literal translation is something like “How goes it?”]
Thus, I disagree that the differences the authors found necessarily reflected differences that were unique to the human species. Remember, we are not trying to understand the parrots’ vocal system at all, but asking them to learn ours! And please do not think that I am recommending that every owner who reads this blog should try to give their parrot the same kind of input as they would a young child! Although using our Model/Rival technique to teach parrots labels that enable them to have some control over their lives could be a form of enrichment, it isn’t a requirement. Rather, just be impressed with what your parrots actually can deduce and acquire from the input they do receive—appreciate them for what incredible individuals they are!
References
Pepperberg, I.M. (1999). The Alex studies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Pepperberg, I.M. (2024). Comments on “Comparing the productive vocabularies of Grey parrots (Psittacus erithacus) and young children”. Anim. Cogn. 27 (79):online (open access) https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-024-01917-y
Roubalová T, Jarůšková L, Chláková K, Lindová J (2024) Comparing the productive vocabularies of Grey parrots (Psittacus erithacus) and young children. Anim Cogn, 27(45):online (open access)
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-024-01883-5