Bottlenosed dolphin and human recognition of veridical and degraded video displays of an artificial gestural language.

Herman, Louis M.; Morrel-Samuels, Palmer; Pack, Adam A.

doi:10.1037/0096-3445.119.2.215

Cited by 72 publications

(55 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…The gestural commands used to instruct the dolphins to perform a particular behavior were moderate-to large-scale movements ofthe arms and hands ofa trainer who stood immediately adjacent to the tank wall; only the upper half of the trainer's body was visible to the dolphin in the tank (for further details, see . Dolphins have been shown to be highly proficient at recognizing such gestures, even when the gestures are substantially degraded (Herman, Morrel-Samuels, & Pack, 1990). A single gestural command could be used to instruct a dolphin to perform a single action, or multiple consecutive gestural commands could be used to instruct a dolphin to perform several actions simultaneously, such as spitting while jumping (glossed as a combination behavior).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Memory for recent actions in the bottlenosed dolphin (Tursiops truncatus): Repetition of arbitrary behaviors using an abstract rule

Mercado

Murray

Uyeyama

et al. 1998

Animal Learning & Behavior

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100

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Little is known about how animals represent their own actions in working memory. We investigated whether bottlenosed dolphins could recall actions they had recently performed and reveal those recollections using an abstract rule. Two dolphins were trained to respond to a specific gestural command by repeating the last behavior performed. Both dolphins proved to be able to repeat a wide variety of behaviors on command and were able to generalize the repeating rule to novel behaviors and situations. One dolphin was able to repeat all 36 behaviors she was tested on, including behaviors involving multiple simultaneous actions and self-selected behaviors. These results suggest that dolphins can flexibly access memories of their recent actions and that these memories are of sufficient detail to allow for reenactments. The repeating task can potentially be used to investigate short-term action and event representations in a variety of species.Animals act under the influence of mental representations that result from a variety of internal and external factors. Understanding how animals create, activate, and manipulate such representations is a central concern for studies ofanimal learning and memory. A variety of techniques (e.g., delayed matching-to-sample tasks and maze tasks) have been developed to gain access to "unobservable" neural representational systems (for a review, see Roitblat, 1982Roitblat, , 1987. These techniques have been used extensively to investigate how animals represent external stimuli (e.g., objects, sounds, locations, and events) that they have experienced in the recent past. In contrast, few studies have investigated how animals represent recent internal events, such as the production of behaviors. Consequently, more is currently known about how animals represent environmental conditions in working memory than about how they represent their recent actions. An animal's short-term memory for its own actions can be interpreted as a type ofmetaknowledge; self-reports based on such memories can be used to measure an animal's ability to explicitly recall past behaviors (Shimp, 1982).

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Memory for recent actions in the bottlenosed dolphin (Tursiops truncatus): Repetition of arbitrary behaviors using an abstract rule

Mercado

Murray

Uyeyama

et al. 1998

Animal Learning & Behavior

Self Cite

100

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Some of the most exciting and controversial research addressing this question involves teaching animals various human-made communication systems, including vocal (Pepperberg, 1981), gestural (Gardner & Gardner, 1984;Herman, Morrel-Samuels, & Pack, 1990), token-based (A. J. Premack & Premack, 1972), and computer-based (Rumbaugh, 1977) schemes.…”

Section: Language Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparative cognition: Beginning the second century of the study of animal intelligence.

Wasserman

1993

Psychological Bulletin

130

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Comparative psychology has undergone many changes since its inception in Victorian England some 100 years ago. Gone are the amusing anecdotes of pet owners and amateur naturalists, replaced by the detailed observations of behavioral scientists made under carefully controlled conditions. Yet, many of the persistent problems in the comparative analysis of intelligence remain: Are the cognitive processes of animals like those of humans? Can researchers construct a phytogeny of intelligence? What is cognition without language? This article briefly reviews the history of the study of comparative cognition. It then discusses 2 of the most active and important areas of empirical inquiry-memory and conceptualization-to acquaint readers with contemporary research in the field. Given increased contact with the related areas of cognitive science, behavioral neuroscience, and behavioral ecology, comparative cognition should continue in its 2nd century to make significant contributions to the overall understanding of the principles of behavior. How familiar a scene it is. A learned and eloquent scientist gazes upward toward the distant heavens, sighs wistfully, and plaintively asks "Is there life beyond earth? Is that life intelli-gent? If so, can we communicate with it?" What a noble quest: to search out alien life and to interact with it. A quest not only noble but also generously funded by governmental agencies. Radio telescopes, orbiting satellites, and both staffed and unstaffed cosmic expeditions have been and will be constructed and undertaken to find extraterrestrial life-at great public expense and with much media fanfare. I wish not to demean these important efforts but rather to suggest that an equally challenging and probably more fruitful search for alien intelligence can take place-right here on earth. Thousands of species of animals inhabit this planet, many of them exhibiting notable craft, flexibility, and ingenuity in adapting to the numerous challenges of survival. The careful and scientific study of our planetmates may shed considerable light on the nature of intelligence, on the character of cognition without language, and on the very possibility of communication with extraterrestrial life-if it is ever found. Perhaps most important, comparing the intelligence of many species of animals may help us know better what it means to be human. Although the study of animal intelligence has been an ongoing concern of scientists for some 100 years-Romanes's (1883/ 1977) classic book, Animal Intelligence, was published in 1883-most people know very little about it. The present popularity of many nature programs on television plus the great publicity that several research projects on animal behavior have recently received suggest that now might be an opportune time to out

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“…Herman (1990) recommended using three-dimensional, real-world objects and ensuring a clear distinction between figure and background. Once a dolphin has learned a visual task in the three-dimensional world, a transfer to two-dimensional and even abstract signals is easily accomplished, as was demonstrated in the study with video displays by Herman, Morrel-Samuels, and Pack (1990). In our study, the procedure and stimuli were thus chosen accordingly.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

A bottlenose dolphin discriminates visual stimuli differing in numerosity

Kilian

Yaman

Fersen³

et al. 2003

Animal Learning & Behavior

141

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A bottlenose dolphin was trained to discriminate two simultaneously presented stimuli differing in numerosity (defined by the number of constituent elements). After responding correctly to stimuli consisting of three-dimensional objects, the dolphin transferred to two-dimensional stimuli. Initially, a variety of stimulus parameters covaried with the numerosity feature. By systematically controlling for these stimulus parameters, it was demonstrated that some of these attributes, such as element configuration and overall brightness, affected the animal's discrimination performance. However, after all the confounding parameters were under control, the dolphin was able to discriminate the stimuli exclusively on the basis of the numerosity feature. The animal then achieved a successful transfer to novel numerosities, both intervening numerosities and numerosities outside the former range. These findings provide substantial evidence that the dolphin could base his behavior on the numerosity of a set independently of its other attributes and that he represented ordinal relations among numerosities.

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Bottlenosed dolphin and human recognition of veridical and degraded video displays of an artificial gestural language.

Cited by 72 publications

References 37 publications

Memory for recent actions in the bottlenosed dolphin (Tursiops truncatus): Repetition of arbitrary behaviors using an abstract rule

Memory for recent actions in the bottlenosed dolphin (Tursiops truncatus): Repetition of arbitrary behaviors using an abstract rule

Comparative cognition: Beginning the second century of the study of animal intelligence.

A bottlenose dolphin discriminates visual stimuli differing in numerosity

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