<story><title>Crows can perform as well as 7- to 10-year-olds on cause-and-effect tasks</title><url>http://www.news.ucsb.edu/2014/014330/smarter-second-grader</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>randall</author><text>Another researcher thinks effects like this are due to language in humans. (Maybe not directly linked, but somewhat related)&lt;p&gt;Basically the experiment was to have a rectangular room with 4 white walls, and then another box with one blue wall.&lt;p&gt;Researchers put some food in the room to the left of the blue wall, showed it to a rat, then spun the rat around, and the rat got it right 50% of the time. (IE random chance.)&lt;p&gt;Researchers did the same experiment with kids, and kids under 6 failed every time. Though after age 6, kids start using spacial language and can say the phrase &amp;quot;left of the blue wall&amp;quot;, which implies to the researcher we use language to connect different disparate parts of the brain.&lt;p&gt;More on this during this radiolab episode:
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.radiolab.org/story/91725-words/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.radiolab.org&amp;#x2F;story&amp;#x2F;91725-words&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Crows can perform as well as 7- to 10-year-olds on cause-and-effect tasks</title><url>http://www.news.ucsb.edu/2014/014330/smarter-second-grader</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>blendergasket</author><text>Just last night I watched a really, really great documentary on crow intelligence called &amp;quot;A Murder of Crows&amp;quot;. I highly, highly recommend it. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s472GjbLKQ4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=s472GjbLKQ4&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>