Links for Keyword: Intelligence

Follow us on Facebook or subscribe to our mailing list, to receive news updates. Learn more.

Links 121 - 140 of 315

The Average Bear Is Smarter Than You Thought

By Jason G. Goldman Yogi Bear always claimed that he was smarter than the average bear, but the average bear appears to be smarter than once thought. Psychologists Jennifer Vonk of Oakland University and Michael J. Beran of Georgia State University have taken a testing methodology commonly used for primates and shown not only that the methodology can be more widely used, but also that bears can distinguish among differing numerosities. Numerical cognition is perhaps the best understood of the core building blocks of the mind. Decades of research have provided evidence for the numerical abilities of gorillas, chimpanzees, rhesus, capuchin, and squirrel monkeys, lemurs, dolphins, elephants, birds, and fish. Pre-linguistic human infants share the same mental modules for representing and understanding numbers as those non-human animal species. Each of these species is able to precisely count sets of objects up to three, but after that, they can only approximate the number of items in a set. Even human adults living in cultures whose languages have not developed an explicit count list must rely on approximation rather than precision for quantities larger than three. For this reason, it is easier for infants and animals to distinguish thirty from sixty than it is to distinguish thirty from forty, since the 1:2 ratio (30:60) is smaller than the 3:4 ratio (30:40). As the ratios increase, the difference between the two sets becomes smaller, making it more difficult to discriminate between them without explicit counting. Given that species as divergent as humans and mosquitofish represent number in the same ways, subject to the same (quantity-based and ratio-based) limits and constraints, it stands to reason that the ability to distinguish among two quantities is evolutionarily-ancient. © 2012 Scientific American

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 6: Evolution of the Brain and Behavior; Chapter 1: Introduction: Scope and Outlook
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 0: ; Chapter 20:
Link ID: 16949 - Posted: 06.21.2012

The Games Crows Play, and Other Winged Tales

By JAMES GORMAN The extremes of animal behavior can be a source of endless astonishment. Books have been written about insect sex. The antics of dogs and cats are sometimes hard to believe. And birds, those amazing birds: They build elaborate nests, learn lyrical songs, migrate impossibly long distances. But “Gifts of the Crow,” by John N. Marzluff and Tony Angell, includes a description of one behavior that even Aesop never imagined. “On Kinkazan Island in northern Japan,” the authors write, “jungle crows pick up deer feces — dry pellets of dung — and deftly wedge them in the deer’s ears.” What!? I checked the notes at the back of the book, and this account comes from another book, written in Japanese. So I can’t give any more information on this astonishing claim, other than to say that Dr. Marzluff, of the University of Washington, and Mr. Angell, an artist and observer of birds, think that the crows do it in the spirit of fun. Deer droppings, it must be said, are only one of the crows’ gifts. The authors’ real focus is on the way that crows can give us “the ephemeral and profound connection to nature that many people crave.” To that end, however, they tell some wild anecdotes and make some surprising assertions. Many of the behaviors they describe — crows drinking beer and coffee, whistling and calling dogs and presenting gifts to people who feed them — are based on personal testimony and would seem to fall into the category of anecdote rather than science. © 2012 The New York Times Company

Best evidence yet that a single gene can affect IQ

by Andy Coghlan A massive genetics study relying on fMRI brain scans and DNA samples from over 20,000 people has revealed what is claimed as the biggest effect yet of a single gene on intelligence – although the effect is small. There is little dispute that genetics accounts for a large amount of the variation in people's intelligence, but studies have consistently failed to find any single genes that have a substantial impact. Instead, researchers typically find that hundreds of genes contribute. Following a brain study on an unprecedented scale, an international collaboration has now managed to tease out a single gene that does have a measurable effect on intelligence. But the effect – although measurable – is small: the gene alters IQ by just 1.29 points. According to some researchers, that essentially proves that intelligence relies on the action of a multitude of genes after all. "It seems like the biggest single-gene impact we know of that affects IQ," says Paul Thompson of the University of California, Los Angeles, who led the collaboration of 207 researchers. "But it's not a massive effect on IQ overall," he says. The variant is in a gene called HMGA2, which has previously been linked with people's height. At the site of the relevant mutation, the IQ difference depends on a change of a single DNA "letter" from C, standing for cytosine, to T, standing for thymine. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 1: Introduction: Scope and Outlook; Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 20: ; Chapter 4: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 16667 - Posted: 04.17.2012

A question of intelligence

OUR intelligence, more than any particular behaviour or anatomical feature, is what distinguishes humans from the myriad other species with which we share our planet. It is a key factor in everything from our anatomy to our technology. To ask why we are intelligent is to ask why we are human; it admits no discrete answer. But let's ask it here anyway. Why are we, alone in nature, so smart? Perhaps we are not. Maybe our anthropocentric conceit prevents us from fully appreciating the intelligence of other animals, be they ants, cephalopods or cetaceans. As Douglas Adams put it: "Man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man - for precisely the same reasons." So let's rephrase the question. There is a cluster of abilities that seems unique to humans: language, tool use, culture and empathy. Other animals may have rudimentary forms of these abilities, but they do not approach humans' sophistication and flexibility. Why not? Some come closer than others. German psychologists say they have identified a chimp whose mental abilities far surpass those of its peers (see "Chimp prodigy shows signs of human-like intelligence"). Intriguingly, they go on to suggest that this might be because Natasha, the simian prodigy, exhibits strong social-reasoning skills, such as learning from others. These are the same skills to which the explosive development of human intelligence is increasingly attributed. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Boost Intelligence by Focusing on Growth

By Melinda Wenner Moyer Is intelligence innate, or can you boost it with effort? The way you answer that question may determine how well you learn. Those who think smarts are malleable are more likely to bounce back from their mistakes and make fewer errors in the future, according to a study published last October in Psychological Science. Researchers at Michigan State University asked 25 undergraduate students to participate in a simple, repetitive computer task: they had to press a button whenever the letters that appeared on the screen conformed to a particular pattern. When they made a mistake, which happened about 9 percent of the time, the subjects realized it almost immediately—at which point their brain produced two tiny electrical responses that the researchers recorded using electrodes. The first reaction indicates awareness that a mistake was made, whereas the second, called error positivity, is believed to represent the desire to fix that slipup. Later, the researchers asked the students whether they believed intelligence was fixed or could be learned. Although everyone slowed down after erring, those who were “growth-minded”—that is, people who considered intelligence to be pliable—elicited stronger error-positivity responses than the other subjects. They subsequently made fewer mistakes, too. “Everybody says, ‘Oh, I did something wrong, I should slow down,’ but it was only the growth-minded individuals who actually did something with that information and made it better,” explains lead author Jason Moser, a clinical psychologist at Michigan State. © 2012 Scientific American,

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 17: Learning and Memory; Chapter 1: Introduction: Scope and Outlook
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory and Learning; Chapter 20:
Link ID: 16540 - Posted: 03.19.2012

Life-long intelligence in the genes

Heidi Ledford A Scottish intelligence study that began 80 years ago has borne new fruit. Researchers have tracked down the study’s surviving participants — who joined the study when they were 11 years old — to estimate the role that our genes have in maintaining intelligence through to old age. Researchers have long been interested in understanding how cognition changes with age, and why these changes are more rapid in some people than in others. But, in the past, studies of age-related intelligence changes were often performed when the subjects were already elderly. Then, in the late 1990s, research psychologist Ian Deary of the University of Edinburgh, UK, and his colleagues realized that Scotland had two data sets that would allow them to take such studies a step further. In 1932 and 1947, officials had conducted a sweeping study of intelligence among thousands of 11-year-old Scottish children. The data, Deary learned, had been kept confidential for decades. He and his colleagues set about tracking down the original participants, many of whom did not remember taking the original tests. The team collected DNA samples and performed fresh intelligence tests in nearly 2,000 of the original participants, then aged 65 or older. © 2012 Nature Publishing Group,

Universal intelligence: One test to rule them all

by Celeste Biever HOW intelligent are you? I'd like to think I know how smart I am, but the test in front of me is making me reconsider. On my computer screen, a puzzling row of boxes appears: some contain odd-looking symbols, while others are empty. I click on one of the boxes. A red sign indicates I made an error. Dammit. I concentrate, and try again. Yes, a green reward! Despite this small success, I am finding it tough to make sense of what's going on: this is unlike any exam I've ever done. Perhaps it's not surprising that it feels unfamiliar - it's not your average IQ test. I am taking part in the early stages of an effort to develop the first "universal" intelligence test. While traditional IQ and psychometric tests are designed to home in on differences between people, a universal test would rank humans, robots, chimps and perhaps even aliens on a single scale - using a mathematically derived definition of intelligence, rather than one tainted by human bias. What's the point? The idea for a universal test has emerged from the study of artificial intelligence and a desire for better ways to measure it. Next year, the most famous test for gauging the smarts of machines will be widely celebrated on the 100th anniversary of the birth of Alan Turing, its creator. The Turing test is, however, flawed. To pass it, a machine has to fool a human judge into believing he or she is conversing with another person. But exactly how much smarter are you than the cleverest robot? The test cannot tell you. It also cannot measure intelligence greater than a human's. Machines are getting smarter - possibly smarter than us, soon - so we need a much better way to gauge just how clever they are. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Why Is Average IQ Higher in Some Places?

By Christopher Eppig Being smart is the most expensive thing we do. Not in terms of money, but in a currency that is vital to all living things: energy. One study found that newborn humans spend close to 90 percent of their calories on building and running their brains. (Even as adults, our brains consume as much as a quarter of our energy.) If, during childhood, when the brain is being built, some unexpected energy cost comes along, the brain will suffer. Infectious disease is a factor that may rob large amounts of energy away from a developing brain. This was our hypothesis, anyway, when my colleagues, Corey Fincher and Randy Thornhill, and I published a paper on the global diversity of human intelligence. A great deal of research has shown that average IQ varies around the world, both across nations and within them. The cause of this variation has been of great interest to scientists for many years. At the heart of this debate is whether these differences are due to genetics, environment or both. Higher IQ predicts a wide range of important factors, including better grades in school, a higher level of education, better health, better job performance, higher wages, and reduced risk of obesity. So having a better understanding of variations in intelligence might yield a greater understanding of these other issues as well. Before our work, several scientists had offered explanations for the global pattern of IQ. Nigel Barber argued that variation in IQ is due primarily to differences in education. Donald Templer and Hiroko Arikawa argued that colder climates are difficult to live in, such that evolution favors higher IQ in those areas. © 2011 Scientific American,

Researchers watch dolphins use shells to catch fish

PERTH, Australia — Dolphins in one western Australian population have been observed holding a large conch shell in their beaks and using it to shake a fish into their mouths — and the behavior may be spreading. Researchers from Murdoch University in Perth were not quite sure what they were seeing when they first photographed the activity, in 2007, in which dolphins would shake conch shells at the surface of the ocean. "It's a fleeting glimpse — you look at it and think, that's kind of weird," said Simon Allen, a researcher at the university's Cetacean Research Unit. "Maybe they're playing, maybe they're socializing, maybe males are presenting a gift to a female or something like that, maybe the animals are actually eating the animal inside," he added. But researchers were more intrigued when they studied the photos and found the back of a fish hanging out of the shell, realizing that the shaking drained the water out of the shells and caused the fish that was sheltering inside to fall into the dolphins' mouths. A search through records for dolphins in the eastern part of Shark Bay, a population that has been studied for nearly 30 years, found roughly half a dozen sightings of similar behavior over some two decades. Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 6: Evolution of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 0:
Link ID: 15744 - Posted: 08.30.2011

The world's smartest insect

by Michael Marshall Anyone who has used an in-car satnav will be familiar with Jane, the calm voice that tells you to turn around because you've gone the wrong way. Many users will also be familiar with the response: yelling "Shut up, Jane!" while performing illegal turns. Bumblebees, it turns out, could give Jane a run for her money. Despite having a brain the size of a poppy seed, these insects can solve a fiendish navigational problem that modern supercomputers struggle to crack. Not so bumbling Bumblebees have been changing their name for centuries. From Shakespeare through to Darwin they were known as "humblebees", because of the humming sound they make. Then in the 20th century, for no good reason, they became "bumblebees". Like honeybees and ants they are social insects, with a queen who controls hordes of sterile workers. Among other ingenious behaviours, they keep their nests at a constant temperatureMovie Camera, avoid foraging close to homeMovie Camera for fear of leading predators to it, and become paranoid when camouflaged predators are aboutMovie Camera. Buff-tailed bumblebee workers fly from flower to flower in search of nectar and pollen. But each flight costs energy and time, so they need to minimise the distance they fly. To do that, they have to solve one of the hardest problems in mathematics: the travelling salesman problem. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Gould's skulls: Is bias inevitable in science?

by David DeGusta and Jason E. Lewis Stephen Jay Gould claimed unconscious bias could affect even seemingly objective scientific measurements. Not so TRUTH is hard to come by, as personal lives and politics readily illustrate. Since science lays claim to providing some form of truth, it is bound to draw criticism on that count. Surprisingly, one of the sharpest attacks came from within, and from one of the giants, Harvard University's Stephen Jay Gould. Gould was a man of many parts - invertebrate palaeontologist, evolutionary theorist, historian of science, crusader against creationism and a prolific populariser of science with a slew of bestselling books. He was an iconic scientist of the late 20th century, a stature confirmed by that arbiter of cultural relevance, The Simpsons, in which he was a featured guest star in one episode. Even so, Gould harboured grave doubts about the ability of science to remain free from social pressures and bias. He made a series of statements in a 1978 Science paper that are startling given his role as a spokesperson for science: "...unconscious or dimly perceived finagling, doctoring, and massaging are rampant, endemic, and unavoidable in a profession [science] that awards status and power for clean and unambiguous discovery"; "unconscious manipulation of data may be a scientific norm"; "scientists are human beings rooted in cultural contexts, not automatons directed toward external truth". This was blasphemy from the pulpit. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 1: Introduction: Scope and Outlook
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 20:
Link ID: 15608 - Posted: 07.26.2011

Brainy parrot shows it can think like a 4-year-old child

By Stephanie Pappas Senior writer Parrots are capable of logical leaps, according to a new study in which a gray parrot named Awisa used reasoning to figure out where a bit of food was hidden. The task is one that kids as young as 4 could figure out, but the only other animals that have been shown to use this type of reasoning are great apes. That makes gray parrots the first non-primates to demonstrate such logical smarts, said study researcher Sandra Mikolasch, a doctoral candidate at the University of Vienna. "We now know that a gray parrot is able to logically exclude a wrong possibility and instead choose the right one in order to get a reward, which is known as 'inference by exclusion,'" Mikolasch wrote in an email to LiveScience. Parrots are no birdbrains. One famous gray parrot, Alex, even understood the concept of "zero," something children don't grasp until they are 3 or 4. Alex, who died in 2007, had a vocabulary of 150 words, which he seemed to use in two-way communication with the researchers who worked with him. Other animals have also revealed high levels of intelligence. Elephants, for example, know when and how to cooperate. And hyenas are even better than primates at cooperation. Earlier studies had shown that about one out of five chimps and other great apes could use logical reasoning to find hidden food. © 2011 msnbc.com

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 1: Introduction: Scope and Outlook; Chapter 6: Evolution of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 20:
Link ID: 15478 - Posted: 06.23.2011

Octopus navigates maze to grab its dinner

Sandrine Ceurstemont, video producer How does an octopus locate a hidden meal? In this video, filmed by Michael Kuba and his team at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, food is placed in one compartment of a maze denoted with a visual cue. The octopus picks the right route and successfully retrieves the treat. It's the first time that an octopus has been shown to guide one of its arms to a location, based on sensory input, using a complex movement. In the wild, octopuses use their arms to search for food in small crevices. Previously, it's been thought that they feel their way to a food source by simply using sensors on their tentacles. Now this research is showing that they are capable of more complex processing, in this case by combining information from their tentacles with visual input to achieve a goal. Six out of the seven octopuses tested successfully learned the task and used the strategy more often once it was mastered. It's only one example of clever tricks used by cephalopods. Check out our full-length feature to find out more about these animals' astounding mental skills. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Intelligent people have thicker 'insulation' on the brain's wires

By Daniel Bates The key to being intelligent could be a thick ‘insulation’ on the brain’s wires, scientists have discovered. A fatty layer covering the neural wires helps brain signals travel faster and makes the brain work more quickly. Just as a thick coating on an electrical wire stops current leaking out, a good layer of insulation helps the brain’s ‘circuits’ function more efficiently. A magnified portion of the brain created using diffusion imaging. The bright red areas show the thick fibre tract - the corpus callosum - which transfers information between the left and right sides of the brain A magnified portion of the brain created using diffusion imaging. The bright red areas show the thick fibre tract - the corpus callosum - which transfers information between the left and right sides of the brain The research is among the first to link ‘neural architecture’ to the health of individuals. It also suggests that this characteristic is something we are born with, indicating that intelligence is something we inherit. The researchers from the University of California in Los Angeles studied images of brain scans from 92 sets of identical twins to determine the amount of myelin - a fatty layer - around the brain’s neural wires. © Associated Newspapers Ltd

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 1: Introduction: Scope and Outlook; Chapter 2: Functional Neuroanatomy: The Cells and Structure of the Nervous System
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 20: ; Chapter 1: Cells and Structures: The Anatomy of the Nervous System
Link ID: 15323 - Posted: 05.14.2011

Brainy Birds Live the High Life in Cities

By Jennifer Viegas The brainier a bird is, the better its chances are of thriving in a city, according to a new study that found many big-brained birds can succeed in urban environments. "Big" in this case refers to brain size relative to body size. In other words, the larger the ratio of brain to body, the more likely the bird will thrive in an urban environment. "Species with relatively larger brains tend to have broader diets, live in diverse habitats and have a higher propensity for behavioral innovations in foraging," lead author Alexei Maklakov told Discovery News. "They are better able to establish viable populations when introduced to new habitats by humans." Maklakov, a researcher in the Department of Animal Ecology at Uppsala University, and his colleagues studied how well -- or not -- 82 species of passerine birds belonging to 22 avian families did in and around a dozen cities in France and Switzerland. Bird species that were able to breed in city centers were considered successful colonizers. Birds that bred around the cities, but not in the urban regions themselves, were considered to be urban avoiders. For the study, which is published in the latest issue of Royal Society Biology Letters, the scientists also looked at the brain size and body mass of each bird. The researchers determined that the following are brainy birds that do well in cities: the great tit, the blue tit, the carrion crow, the jackdaw, the magpie, the nuthatch, the wren, the long-tailed tit and more. Pigeons are not passerines, so these ubiquitous urban dwellers were not included in the study. © 2011 Discovery Communications, LLC.

What Does IQ Really Measure?

by Michael Balter Kids who score higher on IQ tests will, on average, go on to do better in conventional measures of success in life: academic achievement, economic success, even greater health, and longevity. Is that because they are more intelligent? Not necessarily. New research concludes that IQ scores are partly a measure of how motivated a child is to do well on the test. And harnessing that motivation might be as important to later success as so-called native intelligence. Researchers have long debated what IQ tests actually measure, and whether average differences in IQ scores--such as those between different ethnic groups--reflect differences in intelligence, social and economic factors, or both. The debate moved heavily into the public arena with the 1994 publication of The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, which suggested that the lower average IQ scores of some ethnic groups, such as African-Americans and Hispanics, were due in large part to genetic differences between them and Caucasian groups. That view has been challenged by many scientists. For example, in his 2009 book "Intelligence and How to Get It," Richard Nisbett, a psychologist at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, argued that differences in IQ scores largely disappear when researchers control for social and economic factors. New work, led by Angela Lee Duckworth, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, and reported online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences explores the effect of motivation on how well people perform on IQ tests. While subjects taking such tests are usually instructed to try as hard as they can, previous research has shown that not everyone makes the maximum effort. A number of studies have found that subjects who are promised monetary rewards for doing well on IQ and other cognitive tests score significantly higher. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 1: Introduction: Scope and Outlook; Chapter 15: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 20: ; Chapter 11: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Link ID: 15268 - Posted: 04.26.2011

Who's Smarter, a Human or a Computer? Round 9: Jeopardy

by Andrew Moseman Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter are accustomed to making others feel the heat as they blaze through Jeopardy clue after Jeopardy clue. But tonight, the quiz show's two greatest champions will oppose a player who can't be psyched out. It's time for the world to meet Watson. IBM's Jeopardy-playing computer system appears to viewers at home as an avatar of the Earth on a black screen. In fact, it is a system years in the making, and perhaps the most impressive attempt ever to create a question-answering computer that understands the nuances of human language. Watson is not connected to the Internet, but its databases overflow with books, scripts, dictionaries, and whatever other material lead researcher David Ferrucci could pack in. Storing information is the computer's strong suit; the grand artificial intelligence challenge of Jeopardy is the subtlety of words. When the bright lights of Jeopardy go up tonight, there will be no human handler to tell Watson where inside its mighty databases to seek the answers. It must parse each clue and category title to figure out what it's being asked. It must race through its databases, find relevant search terms, and pick out the right response with a high level of confidence. It must understand the puns and geeky quirks of America's Favorite Quiz Show. It must beat two Jeopardy champions to the buzzer. And it too must voice its responses in the form of a question. © 2011, Kalmbach Publishing Co.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 1: Introduction: Scope and Outlook; Chapter 17: Learning and Memory
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 20: ; Chapter 13: Memory and Learning
Link ID: 15181 - Posted: 04.07.2011

Monkeys display basic numeracy

By Victoria Gill Old World monkeys have better numerical skills than previously thought, researchers have discovered. In a basic numeracy test, long-tailed macaques were able to work out which of two plates contained more raisins. Strangely, they only excelled in this test if they were not allowed to eat the raisins they were shown. The scientists report in the journal Nature Communications that the animals have the ability to understand the concept of relative quantities. The team of researchers from the German Primate Center in Goettingen initially tested the macaques by showing them two plates containing different numbers of raisins. When the animals spontaneously pointed to one of the plates, they were fed the raisins. But in this test, the monkeys often got it wrong - choosing the smaller amount. Lead researcher Vanessa Schmitt said that this was because, rather than thinking about quantities, the animals were thinking about how much they wanted to eat the raisins. "This impulsiveness impaired their judgement," Ms Schmitt told BBC News. BBC © MMXI

Elephants Can Lend a Helping Trunk

by Virginia Morell Elephants know when they need a helping hand—or rather, trunk. That's the conclusion of a new study that tested the cooperative skills of Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) in Thailand and showed that the pachyderms understand that they will fail at a task without a partner's assistance. The ability to recognize that you sometimes need a little help from your friends is a sign of higher social cognition, psychologists say, and is rarely found in other species. Elephants now join an elite club of social cooperators: chimpanzees, hyenas, rooks, and humans. To test the elephants' cooperation skills, a team of scientists modified a classic experiment first administered to chimpanzees in the 1930s, which requires two animals work together to earn a treat. If they don't cooperate, neither gets the reward. For the elephants, the researchers used a sliding table with a single rope threaded around it. Two bowls of corn were attached to the table, but the elephants could reach them only by pulling two ends of the rope simultaneously. Working with mahout—Asian elephant trainers—trained elephants at the Thai Elephant Conservation Center in Lampang, the researchers first taught individual animals to pull the rope with their trunks. The 12 elephants were then divided into six pairs, and each pair was released to walk to their waiting ropes. If one animal pulled the rope before the other, the rope would slip out, leaving the table—and treats—in place. "That taught them to pull together," says Joshua Plotnik, a postdoc in experimental psychology at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom and the lead author of the study, which appears online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Who's Smarter, a Human or a Computer? Round 9: Jeopardy

by Andrew Moseman Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter are accustomed to making others feel the heat as they blaze through Jeopardy clue after Jeopardy clue. But tonight, the quiz show's two greatest champions will oppose a player who can't be psyched out. It's time for the world to meet Watson. IBM's Jeopardy-playing computer system appears to viewers at home as an avatar of the Earth on a black screen. In fact, it is a system years in the making, and perhaps the most impressive attempt ever to create a question-answering computer that understands the nuances of human language. Watson is not connected to the Internet, but its databases overflow with books, scripts, dictionaries, and whatever other material lead researcher David Ferrucci could pack in. Storing information is the computer's strong suit; the grand artificial intelligence challenge of Jeopardy is the subtlety of words. advertisement | article continues below When the bright lights of Jeopardy go up tonight, there will be no human handler to tell Watson where inside its mighty databases to seek the answers. It must parse each clue and category title to figure out what it's being asked. It must race through its databases, find relevant search terms, and pick out the right response with a high level of confidence. It must understand the puns and geeky quirks of America's Favorite Quiz Show. It must beat two Jeopardy champions to the buzzer. And it too must voice its responses in the form of a question. © 2011, Kalmbach Publishing Co.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 1: Introduction: Scope and Outlook; Chapter 18: Attention and Higher Cognition
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 20: ; Chapter 14: Attention and Higher Cognition
Link ID: 15062 - Posted: 03.03.2011

Previous Page | Next Page

Links By Chapter:

Links for Keyword: Intelligence