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- This species is intelligent and prone to self-injurious behaviour in capitivity as a result of boredom.
- It is difficult to generalise the results from a case study.
- The parrot was a trained laboratory animal, it would be hard to say it is representative of the general population.
- The species of parrot involved in the study if fairly intelligent, and being kept in an artificial environment for such an extended period of time while participating in non-naturalistic behaaviours could be unethical.

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- The validity was maintained; question order and materials were selected by a student with no connection to the project.
- Alex suffered from boredom, hence they varied his training and testing schedules in order to control for reptitive behaviours.
- Researcher bias was limited as the trainer conducting the trials had not trained Alex on the same/different task.
- Demand characteristics was not disclosed as he did not interact with his usual trainer.
- Quantitative data was collected that allows to make an objective analysis.
- It also enabled comparison of two different sorts of tests, one involving familiar objects and one involving novel objects.
- The ethical issues concerning Alex's housing, rewards, deprivationa, aversive stimuli and procedure all was taken into account.

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- Parrots have a potential to demonstrate comprehension of the symbolic concepts 'same' and 'different'.
- They may also learn to respond to verbal questions to vocalise categorical labels.

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- Familiar object test - Alex correctly responded to 99/129 trials (76.6%). This was for first trials answered correctly and correction procedures.
- For first trials only, Alex answered correctly 69/99 instances (69.7%).
- Novel object test - Alex correctly responded to 96/113 on all trials (85%), and 79/96 (82.3%) on first trial performance only.
- In the novel object test Alex performed better than the familiar object test.
- The reason for this could be that Alex received the objects as his reward for every correct response.
- He might have been motivated to do better on novel trials because he was curious to investigate newer reward items.

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- The principle trainer was present in each trial but faced away from Alex and was unable to see the objects.
- After Alex's response the trainer repeated the vocalisation aloud and with each correct response, he was rewarded with praise and given the item.
- The correct answer in the first trial counted as the 'first-trial' response rate.
- For every incorrect or indistinct vocalisation Alex was said 'No!' and had the object removed while the trainer turned their head awayfrom the parrot (known as time-out).
- This correction procedure was repeated until the correct response was given, and the number of errors was recorded.

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- The testing phase was delayed for the purpose of accuracy as Alex couldn't pronounce the labels clearly.
- Alex was trained by secondary trainers who had not worked with him on learning same/different.
- The material were paired from a selection given to a student who had nothing to do with the study, in order to create an unbiased set of stimuli.
- The set of questions were also randomly used in each trial.
- Filler questions were included in order to prevent boredom.
- In each trial, Alex was presented with two objects that could differ in one of the three categories: shape,color,material.
- The task would either involve pairs of familiar items (familiar trials) or one or both items which he had not yet encountered in training (novel trial).

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- The second or learner human acts as a model to the parrot who is watching the interaction.
- The parrot can be considered a 'rival' for the trainer's attention.
- For the right vocalisation the parrot receive the reward or praise rather than the model human.
- The roles of trainer/model are then reversed.
- At the beginning of training, a system of continuous reinforcement was used.
- This was intended to create a closest possible association between the object or category and label to be learned.
- During the training on same/different the model would either respond with the correct category and be rewarded, or would give an incorrect response and be scolded and have the object taken away.

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- Prior to training, Alex already had a considerable vocabulary as a result of his previous experience as a research subject(eg. names of colors, shapes and different kind of materials).
- He also had expereince of replying to verbal prompts.
- The purpose of training was to teach Alex to respond to questions with a categorical label., rather than simply describing an item's appearance, or stating whether it matched or did not match the paired item.
- It is a more complex task which required "ABSTRACT THINKING".
- He was engaged in training session two to four times a week, each session lasting between 5 minutes and 1 hour.
- The training method used in this study is known as the "MODE;/RIVAL or M/R approach".
- One human acts as the trainer of the second human by presenting the second with objects and offering rewards or praise to desirable responses.

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- One African Grey Parrot called Alex.
- He had been involved in prior research on communication and cognition for around ten years.
- During the day, parrot had free access to all areas of the laboratory and at night he was confined to a wire cage.
- He was fed a diet suitable for his species and given toys to play with.

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This was an animal case study involving one subject who was trained and tested over a couple of years.

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- Studies have shown that non-human primates have the cognitive capacity to express abstract ideas and in some cases, form meaningful sentences.
- One cognitive capacity i.e "CONCEPTUAL CATEGORIZATION" of items as the same or different is thought to be present in other animals.
- The concept of "SYMBOLIC REPRESENTATION" i.e. the concept of samness or difference learned from one experience can be applied to an entierly new and different situation.
- This particular skill needs to be developed for the animal to clearly categorize items.
- The capacity to recognise same/different items is present in many bird species. It serves as an adaptive function; it benefits a bird's survival.

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The aim of the study was to see whether a parrot could use vocal labels to demonastrate a symbolic understanding of the concepts 'same' and 'different'.