Here is the proposal: mamals, or perhaps lizards to some degree, have a tendency of developing simbolic or some sort of abstract thinking, but itr might be so, that these tendency for non humans is so low, thta in usual ennvironments it doesnt come up.

So first,try to make animals concentrate on words (same font all the time).Say geta cat, and put it into environment where it can get milk or something in deifferent ways (one kind of way at a time), and they can do so always near the presence of the word MILK. Later on as they have obviously mastered all the ways of gettng milk, they qare put in a different environment, there is still the presence of the word MILK but with somewhat different buts still similar fonts. Reapeat changing environment and fonts of milk, as they obviously look for the word milk in the new environment, stopping there (not seeing any obvious presence of mik, but the word written). See if they also try their repertoire to get milk. Then after that, add more words, giving clue about the way they can get the milk, see if they learn that and going to search with the right way. Then see if words of way of changing without the word milk will still start the behaviour. They should learn it that milk means milk somewhere, other words give clues abiout getting it. Note that english might not be the best language for the experiment, lojban or german seems fine.

That prooven, some mammal embryoes should be shaped with signals, so that their limbs and body gets shaped to a human like, able to behave like a human (mechanisms of limb bone and muscle shaping are known). Then teach them to read and do various tasks, or create things with their human like hands or whatever to get their object of interest, and slowly direct their attention to simbols or otherwise patterns, insted of the desired object. See how human they might become. :] (and that is without genetical modification, before u get it wrong).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaping_%28psychology%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaining



This subject is what we have been doing in psychology for like the last week.

Not quite what u posted, but similar indeed. What u posted uiws a sucessive punctuation ofa behaviour towrds one with a specified form. But what i was talking about, is the shaping of associations in the mind of the subject towards a specified meaning, by first directing their attention to symbols, then later elaborating for them the meaning of simbols. So its not a behaviour of exact shape we are aiming for here, but an association of simbole to the right things. The bahaviour itself has to change variing the combinations of simbols, even so that eventually there will be a somwhat new and unique response, triggered by seeing a combination of simbols. and that new unique response is not cobnditioned with the presence of the simbol pattern, but by the animals understandin of symbols. But i onlí read till the end of first comment from skimmer.