[Gpdd] MISC: Charleston and Psyc

[Laura G Rollins]

Hi guys,
-Sherry, I would love to do a pignic. I live in Charleston SC. Plus I know of 
a few other GP owners who would love to do it too! This is so exciting! If you 
need any help planning, let me know!
-Lucky's mom, twas I who wrote about the psyc training. Yes, piggies are sooo 
much smarter than we give them credit for! Their cognitive capacity has yet to 
be effectively measured (which is what I'm doing now). My idea for tracking 
their development is to present them with the typical human infant 
developmental tragectories, such as: concrete objectivity, a sense of self, 
theory of mind, memory of visual and auditory cues, and strategic operational 
thought. Human babies go through several developmental stages and the level at 
which they demonstrate these concepts is a tool to measure their cognitive 
development. THis is done primarily because babies are non-verbal. THis is why 
I decided to use these levels to test the GP's (since they can't really tell 
us if they know something or not). There are different ways to test these, and 
they're not very complicated. 
1. A-not-B errors- this tests object permanence. Basically, you want to see    
if the piggy can tell when you hide something, that it's not allways in the 
same place. 
    - hold a carrot(or treat of some kind) in front of the pig( in your lap in 
a place where it can't run very far, bathroom perhapse) Let him take a bite, 
take it and make sure he pays attention while you close your fist over it so 
that it can't be seen. Do this until he understands that it is in fact in your 
hand, and reward him if he comes to look in your hand with a nibble. Do this 
several times. The next day do the same thing with the same hand. The next 
day, Start with the same hand, then, the next time you do it, hide it behind 
your back ( so that he can't see it) then bring the fist back and let him 
realize that it is not there. Next time, show it to him, hide it behind your 
back and leave your fist loose on your lap. If he keeps going back to the 
hand, he is making an A-not-B error. (this actually is a sign of higher 
processing!) mark his progress, when he stops going to the hand, over the 
course of a few days,he has moved past the A-not-B error stage, This is Huge!!!
Okay, I'll give you another cognitive task next time (my hands are tired!) If 
anyone wants to post their results, tracked over days, that would be awesome. 
If ya'll don't mind, I could use it as data for my research!
Not only is this interesting for you, my piggies have fun with it! It gives us 
a good regular playtime game.
Have fun! Weeeee!
Laura Grace(LG) Luther and Pippin