Dr. Laurie O'Neill

Humans have very good causal understanding and they make good inferences on what are the underlying causes of effects that they see. For example they can feel that a box is full because it is heavy, they can tell that a person is in another room because they can hear movement, or they know that a rock can break open a nut because it is hard. It is debated as to whether humans can do this because it is a very specific area of intelligence important for being an evolutionarily fit human or whether it is a property that is symptomatic of being generally intelligent.

I am studying causal cognition in parrots. Parrots come from a distant evolutionary lineage to humans but show evidence of high intelligence. Thus they are an ideal study group for understanding the relation between general intelligence and causal understanding. I will complete a number of tests of causal understanding on various species of parrots housed at the Loro Parque Fundacion in Tenerife. I will then also complete tests of learning speed and flexibility in these same species as a measure of general intelligence. Together, these tests should help elucidate the role of general intelligence on causal understanding.