The author of the passage and her assistant Marion Pak, are using a particular teaching method with a parrot named Alex.
Which paragraph provides the best summary of the
passage?
from Alex & Me
1
1. Over the course of several weeks, the author
and her assistant trained a parrot to say a new
word. They wanted to do research on how
animals behave and learn new things.
2
The method involves two trainers, rather than the usual one, and they take
turns asking each other about an object's label, with Alex observing. Then
either one would query Alex, using the same words. The idea was that he
would learn in a social context. This procedure was radically different from
what would have been considered normal at the time. Marion and I started
such training that day, on the label "paper"
After Marion left that morning I stayed with Alex for another hour. 1
purposely ignored him until he made a noise, then I rewarded him with paper,
again saying "Paper, Alex, here's your paper. Any parrot owner can tell you
that his or her bird may spontaneously learn some random words, but that's
not the same as teaching meaningful communication. The first small step in
Alex's training was for me to link any novel sound to the single object, paper,
as Marion and I had done in training earlier. The only vocalization
Alex made
was something like "Auf," which seemed exploratory, and a rasping, subvocal
noise he made randomly. As I gave him one index card I said, "OK, Alex, there's
a long way to go, buddy. Alex didn't say anything just continued shredding
paper and wiping his beak. But we had started our work together at last.
it turned out that beginning training with "paper" was an extremely bad
choice, because it is very hard to make a "puh" sound if you don't have lips.
But Alex himself had made the choice, so we were stuck with it.
02 A fascinating project led by the author proved
that parrots are able to learn the meanings of
the words they speak. This discovery was an
Important breakthrough in the study of
animal intelligence
3. A parrot that was part of a scientific study
liked paper because he could play with it and
use it to clean his beak after eating. He
eventually learned how to ask for paper with
the help of the author and her assistant
3
04. Using a carefully designed training method,
the author and her assistant were able to
teach a parrot to use words to communicate
rather than simply Imitate speech. They used
his interest in paper to teach him to connect