科学美国人60秒 SSS Orangutan Picks Cocktail by Seeing Ingredients
时间：2019-01-20 作者：英语课 分类：2016年Scientific American(十一)月
Imagine you had never tasted lemonade. You would still probably assume that lemon juice mixed with sugar tastes better than lemon juice alone. Because you know what lemons taste like, and you know what sugar tastes like.
You can recall those past experiences, and make a prediction about your response to something new. Researchers call the ability to predict our future emotional state "affective forecasting." And some have suggested that the skill is unique to humans. But is it?
"We combined different liquids and asked participants, the orangutan and the humans, to predict how such novel liquid combinations taste like, and whether they prefer one or the other." Lund University cognitive 1 scientist Gabriela-Alina Sauciuc.
She and her colleagues offered their cocktails 2 to a 21-year-old male Sumatran orangutan named Naong, who lives in Sweden's Furuvik Zoo. They used four ingredients—cherry juice, rhubarb juice, lemon juice, and diluted 3 apple cider vinegar—which they combined into six unfamiliar 4 mixtures. Altogether, that made for 24 possible comparisons of one drink against another.
Naong watched the researchers mix his drinks. Then he got to choose from the two set before him. And in 21 of the 24 trials, Naong matched the researchers’ predictions: that his choice would be based on his relative fondness for the separate ingredients. [Gabriela-Alina Sauciuc, et al., Affective forecasting in an orangutan: predicting the hedonic outcome of novel juice mixes, in Animal Cognition]
For example, since he liked rhubarb juice better than lemon juice, he also preferred rhubarb-cherry juice to lemon-cherry juice—despite having had no experience with either.
"We were impressed with Naong's ability to be so consistent in his choices."
From a statistical 5 perspective, the orangutan data was indistinguishable from human data. Both species seemed to make consistent choices about future events even if they had no prior experience to guide their decision-making.
"An ability which was previously 6 thought to be uniquely human presumably has evolved earlier, so that it's shared with orangutans and presumably with chimpanzees as well."
It’s a single study with a single orangutan. But it may be that we will soon mark yet another skill off the list of things that were once thought to be the sole domain 7 of our species. Perhaps what's truly unique about us is our ongoing 8 quest to find something unique about us.
—Jason G. Goldman
- As children grow older,their cognitive processes become sharper.孩子们越长越大，他们的认知过程变得更为敏锐。
- The cognitive psychologist is like the tinker who wants to know how a clock works.认知心理学者倒很像一个需要通晓钟表如何运转的钟表修理匠。
- Come about 4 o'clock. We'll have cocktails and grill steaks. 请四点钟左右来，我们喝鸡尾酒，吃烤牛排。 来自辞典例句
- Cocktails were a nasty American habit. 喝鸡尾酒是讨厌的美国习惯。 来自辞典例句
- The paint can be diluted with water to make a lighter shade. 这颜料可用水稀释以使色度淡一些。
- This pesticide is diluted with water and applied directly to the fields. 这种杀虫剂用水稀释后直接施用在田里。
- I am unfamiliar with the place and the people here.我在这儿人地生疏。
- The man seemed unfamiliar to me.这人很面生。
- He showed the price fluctuations in a statistical table.他用统计表显示价格的波动。
- They're making detailed statistical analysis.他们正在做具体的统计分析。
- The bicycle tyre blew out at a previously damaged point.自行车胎在以前损坏过的地方又爆开了。
- Let me digress for a moment and explain what had happened previously.让我岔开一会儿，解释原先发生了什么。
- This information should be in the public domain.这一消息应该为公众所知。
- This question comes into the domain of philosophy.这一问题属于哲学范畴。
