Teaching activity prepared by Jordana Lenon at the Wisconsin National Primate Research
Center, UW-Madison, jlenon@primate.wisc.edu, 608-263-7024.
Appropriate ages: preschoolers through lifelong learners; adapt as needed.
Are You Smarter Than a Monkey?
How a Wisconsin invention shook up the world of learning!
Description:
Participants will learn about the Wisconsin General Testing Apparatus and how and why it is
used to study learning in people and animals.
Teaches:
How to conduct a scientific learning experiment that is controlled, repetitive, quantitatively
measured, and uses several test participants (subjects).
Equipment (Estimated cost = under $20 minimum)
1. Children’s blocks or other objects of different colors, shapes and sizes.
2. Test Sheets and Example Sheets (provided by the WNPRC), pencils.
3. Rewards, such as crackers, pencils, or stickers.
4. Not necessary, but if teachers have access to an iPAD, we can provide a touch-screen
version of our experiments. Monkeys do the tests both ways, either by grabbing objects
and finding a treat underneath the correct ones, or by touching an object on a screen to
hear a bell noise and release a treat if correct, or just hear a buzzer noise if incorrect. We
can also provide our movie clips of monkeys doing the experiments: we just ask that these
clips not be posted or distributed on line where they could be used out of context.
Description (and scientific method, steps 1-7)
1. State the question you are trying to prove or disprove.
Today, we will ask the question, “Do monkeys and people learn the same way?”
2. Gather information related to the question.
“Scientists thought for a long time (up until the 1930s) that only people could learn, and
that all animals, including monkeys, could not actually learn anything, but only did things
on instinct — what came naturally to them, what they were born with.”
3. State the hypothesis: a possible answer to the question.
“Do you think this is true or not? Do you think that animals can learn like people do?”
(Young children might just say “yes” or “no.” Older students may write down a hypothesis.)
4. Conduct a controlled experiment to test the hypothesis.
“Our test is called the “Wisconsin General Testing Apparatus” or WGTA. This is a test where
you choose an object from one or more in front of you, and every time you choose the
correct object in the experiment, you get a reward.”
1 (Teachers only: It may be tempting, but do not tell the students anything more about what
they are about to do. We can’t tell the monkeys what to do; they have to figure it out for
themselves. This is called “learning to learn.” The correct object will be the one that has
one quality consistently different from all the others, even if there are other similarities
among all of the constantly changing objects. Remember Sesame Street’s “one of these
things is not like the other?” That’s the WGTA in action! You can be creative and change
around objects for each trial however you like. Just keep one thing clearly consistent as the
“correct” choice – a specific shape, color, size, or location, for example.)
5. Observe and record data.
“First, we’ll run a WGTA experiment with ourselves, then we’ll watch monkeys do a similar
experiment in three short movie clips.”
(Teachers only – and remember, your students can also be the teachers/experimenters
once they learn how it works: Complete the top of one WGTA Test Sheet (p. 5) for each
subject (student). Tell the subject to touch the “correct” object before her, and let her
know that for the first trial, there is only one choice. Using the WGTA Example Sheet on p.
4, run the five trials, one at a time. Mark down + (correct) or – (incorrect) for each trial.
For each correct answer, hand the subject a reward at the same time you say, “correct.” If
incorrect, just say, “incorrect.” Enlist a volunteer to assist: One person can set up and run
the trials and give stickers or crackers; the other can enter the + or – marks. Finally, show
the monkey clips for everyone to watch.
6. State a conclusion based on the data.
“What is your conclusion? Do monkeys and people learn the same way?”
(Teachers only: Sample conclusions other than yes or no might be, “People and monkeys
can learn the same way / People and monkeys are both smart / I’m smarter than a monkey
/ I’m faster than the monkey / I got more right than the monkey”, etc. Most people and
monkeys get better and faster at this activity with practice. Success on the simplest
“learning to learn” tasks often depends on age, experience and emotion. There are more
difficult WGTA experiments, which people usually do better at than animals. The WGTA can
also include timed trials. For the WGTA we just performed, we tested “non-spatial
discrimination” vs. “spatial discrimination” – we focused on what the object was (red)
instead of where it was (on this side or that side).
7. Discussion.
The WGTA was invented by UW-Madison primate researchers in the 1930s and proved for
the first time that monkeys could “learn to learn” just like people. It is now used worldwide
for scientific cognition studies in monkeys, people, seals, dolphins, birds and other animals.
Monkeys and young children often learn in the same way and at the same speed. They
learn important things about their surroundings, their environment, things they see, what
to touch or what not to touch. For example, quickly learning specific shapes and colors are
very important to recognize objects in the wild. A monkey's or a child's parents can show
them one object of a certain shape or color and teach them that it’s okay to touch it. (Trial
#1, one object: only choice, gets a reward.) How quickly we learn from our parents can
determine how we succeed on our own: For example, a monkey may need to learn how to
tell apart a long skinny object (a dangerous snake) from a small, round furry one (a
harmless mouse). Both a monkey and a child would need to tell apart a ripe red fruit from
an unripe green one, or a poisonous blue one.
2 Discovering that monkeys can learn also helped veterinarians, zookeepers and animal care
technicians give them more interesting and stimulating things to do other than just eat,
groom or sleep. Monkeys are curious: they need to explore, play, and learn to develop
normally, just like children.
8. Advanced questions
A. Children often do better than adults at even simple WGTA experiments. Why is this?
Answer: Children are often more open-minded and just “go with the flow.” Adults might
question their choices, second guess them, or act nervous or doubtful of whether or not
they will “succeed” — their emotions and experiences may get in the way of just doing the
test and not “thinking too hard” about it.
B. Monkeys and people can both use touch-screen computers, but the standard WGTA with
objects the subject can actually grasp and hold is still often used. Why is this?
Answer: Standard WGTA sets can easily test whether subjects can discriminate between
objects of different textures, objects that are hot or cold, and objects that are light or
heavy. Computers cannot do this, or cannot do it as easily.
9. Advanced exploration
Here are some examples of how scientists use WGTA techniques to measure increasingly
more difficult learning tasks:
A. Simple Discriminations: Non-spatial (what an object is, not where it is) vs. spatial
(where an object is located, not what it is).
B. Higher Order Learning: Has components of non-spatial learning but includes more
choices than just red, for example. The subject might need to identify something
that’s red, has writing on it and is tall and thin (like a quart milk carton), vs
something that is red, but has no writing on it and is flat (like a flying disc).
C. Concept Learning/Match to Sample: Choose the “mug” not the bowl. Then the mug is
taken away and a glass is substituted. Then the bowl and glass are taken away and a
plate and sippy cup are substituted. The mug, glass and cup are correct – they are
all objects one drinks from.
These and other WGTA tasks can be administered to people and animals while scientists
study which parts of the brain are active while these tasks are being performed. Medical
and biomedical imaging equipment that is not harmful to the human subjects or animal
models are used to study the way the brain works. This scanning equipment often includes
PET and sometimes CT, MRI and fMIR techniques (positron emission tomography,
computerized axial tomography or CAT Scan, magnetic resonance imaging, and functional
magnetic resonance imaging.)
Using the WGTA and brain imaging, scientists have discovered, for example, that working
memory is stored in the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex. Working memory is what helps you
retain the memory of an object over the short term.
Scientists have learned that spatial memory – where things are located – is stored in the
hippocampus.
3 WGTA EXAMPLE SHEET
Testers only: Run five trials in this order, using colored blocks, cardboard cut-outs,
PPT slides, or whatever you like. Place a large free-standing piece of cardboard
between tester and subject to serve as a visual barrier that can be lifted right
before each trial. (The correct answer in each trial will be the red object.)
1. Red square
2. Red square, blue square
3. Red rectangle, yellow rectangle, blue rectangle
4. Green triangle, yellow rectangle, red triangle,
orange rectangle
5. Yellow rectangle, orange rectangle, green wedge,
blue rectangle, red rectangle
4 WGTA TEST SHEET
Human Subject: _______________________
Date: _______________________________
Tester: ______________________________
Trial #
Correct (+)
Incorrect (-)
1
2
3
4
5
Total # Correct
5