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Article published In:
Vocal Interactivity in-and-between Humans, Animals and Robots
Edited by Mohamed Chetouani, Elodie F. Briefer, Angela Dassow, Ricard Marxer, Roger K. Moore, Nicolas Obin and Dan Stowell
[Interaction Studies 24:1] 2023
► pp. 87–129

Grapheme–phoneme correspondence learning in parrots

A seventeen-month case study with an umbrella cockatoo

ORCID logo | Parrot Kindergarten, Inc.
ORCID logo | University of Glasgow
ORCID logo | Massachusetts Institute of Technology
 | Rainforest Clinic for Birds and Exotics, Inc.
ORCID logo | University of Miami
Symbolic representation acquisition is the complex cognitive process consisting of learning to use a symbol to stand for something else. A variety of non-human animals can engage in symbolic representation learning. One particularly complex form of symbol representation is the associations between orthographic symbols and speech sounds, known as grapheme–phoneme correspondence. To date, there has been little evidence that animals can learn this form of symbolic representation. Here, we evaluated whether an Umbrella cockatoo (Cacatua alba) can learn letter-speech correspondence using English words. The bird-participant was trained with phonics instruction and then tested on pairs of index cards while the experimenter spoke the word. The words were unknown to the bird and the experimenter was blinded to the correct card position. The cockatoo’s accuracy (M = 71%) was statistically significant. Further, we found a strong correlation between the bird’s word-identification success and the number of overlapping letters between words, where the more overlapping letters between words, the more likely the cockatoo answered incorrectly. Our results strongly suggest that parrots may have the ability to learn grapheme–phoneme correspondences.
Keywords: symbolic representation, grapheme–phoneme correspondence, phonics, cockatoo, avian, parrot
Article outline
  • Grapheme–phoneme correspondence learning in an Umbrella cockatoo (Cacatua alba)
    • Parrot learning abilities
    • Symbolic representation in animals
      • Token symbol systems
      • Gestural and acoustic symbol systems
      • Learning associations between symbols
      • Orthographic processing and symbol decoding
    • Current study
  • Methods
    • Subject
    • Training procedure
      • Training overview
      • Basic discrimination task training
      • Grapheme–phoneme training
    • Training phase 1: Letter discrimination
    • Training phase 2: Written word discrimination
      • Discriminating words with the same starting letter
      • Introduction of lowercase alphabet
      • Introduction of digraphs and blends
    • Training phase 3: Practice testing
    • Testing procedure
  • Results
    • Overview of performance accuracy
    • Exploration of orthographic and phonological sources of errors
  • Discussion
    • Grapheme–phoneme correspondence as symbolic representation
    • Reading as symbol decoding
    • Limitations and future directions
  • Conclusion
  • Conflict of interest
  • Compliance with ethical standards
  • Author contributions
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 28 August 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/is.22040.cun
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