The study: Ben Vermaercke and his colleagues at KU Leuven gave two cognitive-learning tasks to lab rats and students. With both tasks, the subjects were trained to distinguish between “good” and “bad” patterns and then tested on their ability to apply that know-how to new types of patterns. In the first task, the patterns varied on only one dimension—either orientation or spacing—and rats and humans performed it equally well. In the second, the patterns varied on both dimensions, and the rats did better than the humans.
A version of this article appeared in the January–February 2015 issue of Harvard Business Review.