In humans, babies can put a round shape in a round hole from aroundone year of age, but it will be another year before they are able to do thesame with less symmetrical (对称的) shapes. This ability to recognize that a shape will needto be turned in a specific direction before it will fit is called an“allocentric frame of reference”. In the experiment, Goffin’s cockatoos wereable to select the right tool for the job, in most cases, by visual recognitionalone. Where trial-and-error was used, the cockatoos did better than monkeys insimilar tests. This indicates that Goffin’s cockatoos do indeed possess anallocentric frame of reference when moving objects in space, similar totwo-year-old babies.