Irene Maxine Pepperberg (born April 1, 1949) is an American scientist noted for her studies in animal cognition, particularly in relation to parrots.
[1] During her doctoral program, she saw an episode of the PBS TV series Nova about animals and language, which influenced her to focus on that instead of chemistry.
At University of Arizona, she was an associate professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology with joint appointment in the psychology department and in the neuroscience program (1991–2000).
She has been a Bunting Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (2004–2005) and an adjunct associate professor at Brandeis University (2002[4]–2013),[1] where its bird laboratory was named for her.
She worked intensively with a single grey parrot, Alex,[3][6] and reported that he acquired a large vocabulary and used it in a sophisticated way, which is often described as similar to that of a four-year-old child.
[7] Some researchers believe [9] that the training method that Pepperberg used with Alex, (called the model/rival technique)[4] holds promise for teaching autistic and other learning-disabled children who have difficulty learning language and communication skills, numerical concepts and empathy.
[13] The use of this model/rival technique resulted in Alex identifying objects by color, shape, number and material at about the level of chimpanzees and dolphins.
[14] Pepperberg countered critics' claims that Alex had been taught a script by explaining that the controls and tests she used made it impossible for him simply to recite words when she asked questions.
[19] Some researchers have suggested that studying avian cognition might allow a useful artificial intelligence to be built without requiring as much resources, as for some applications a parrot or corvid level complexity brain would be adequate such as for image sorting.
In recent years it was found that pigeons could sort CT scan data as well as microscope slides with equal or better accuracy than a human expert with only weeks of behavioral training needed.