Use of a Tablet-Based Communication Board and Subsequent Choice and Behavioral Correspondences in a Goffin's Cockatoo (Cacatua goffiana)

Cunha, Jennifer; Rhoads, Carlie

doi:10.1145/3446002.3446063

Cited by 8 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…I report on the first attempt to train a bear to use symbols to communicate her preferences. Members of many other species, including nonhuman primates [47,51], domestic dogs [52], dolphins [53] parrots [54], and a cockatoo [13] have shown the ability to use symbols to communicate to varying degrees. Despite lofty intentions of training a black bear to use a touchscreen to communicate her preferences for two-dimensional stimuli, the task, which depended upon a conditional discrimination, proved very difficult to train, as it had been for three gorillas trained in parallel [29].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, researchers recently presented a tablet to a Goffin's cockatoo (Cacatua goffiana) so that the bird could select symbols representing various items, activities, or interactions. Their results suggested that the single cockatoo subject could use the tablet effectively to request objects and interactions that presumably had positive effects on her well-being [13]. The current study aimed to provide a means for a bear to symbolically communicate preferences for the first time.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

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Developing a Preference Scale for a Bear: From “Bearly Like” to “Like Beary Much”

Vonk

2023

Animals

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A preference scale for use by nonhuman animals would allow them to communicate their degree of liking for individual items rather than just relative preferences between pairs of items. It would also allow animals to report liking for images of objects that would be difficult to directly interact with (e.g., potential mates and habitat modifications). Such scales can easily be presented using touchscreen technology. Few zoos have used touchscreen technology for species other than nonhuman primates. I present a description of efforts taken to create such a scale for use with a single zoo-housed American black bear (Ursus americanus). Although the bear did not reach a high level of proficiency with assigning preferred and non-preferred food items to categorical responses of “like” and “dislike,” she was able to learn how to use the like and dislike buttons differentially for a single preferred and less preferred food item and she selected the correct response button for the preferred item at above chance levels. These data contribute to our limited understanding of black bear cognition and suggest that conditional discriminations may be difficult for black bears. This finding can inform continued efforts to create a simpler tool for nonhumans to communicate their preferences to human caregivers in a more nuanced way than is currently possible. More generally, the current study contributes to the growing body of work supporting the use of touchscreen technology for providing enrichment to less studied species like bears.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Developing a Preference Scale for a Bear: From “Bearly Like” to “Like Beary Much”

Vonk

2023

Animals

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“…Symbols, according to Deacon, emerged coincident with the evolution of humankind. Deacon's hypothesis suggests that humankind represents the pinnacle of communicative sophistication and assumes that humans are the only organisms capable of symbolic thought, which is at odds with Indigenous views of agentic nature (Deloria and Wildcat 2001) [18] and recent findings in animal behavior (Addessi et al 2008 [19]; Cunha and Rhoads 2021 [20]; Herman et al 1993 [21]).…”

Section: Doctrine Of Signatures As Ecosemiotic Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Relationality and Metaphor—Doctrine of Signatures, Ecosemiosis, and Interspecies Communication

Williams,

Bédard

2024

Philosophies

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The Doctrine of Signatures (DoS) figures prominently in both contemporary and historic herbal traditions across a diversity of cultures. DoS—conceptualized beyond its conventional interpretation as “like cures like”, which relies solely on plant morphology—can be viewed as a type of ecosemiotic communication system. This nuanced form of interspecies communication relies on the presence of “signatures”, or signs, corresponding to the therapeutic quality of different plants based on their morphology but also their aroma, taste, texture, and even their context in the landscape. Despite its widespread contemporary dismissal by mainstream science as overly simplistic, childlike, primitive, and generally of limited value, we suggest that the recognition of “signatures” in plants may be considered as a form of communication between humans and plants. Drawing upon Indigenous thought, ecosemiotic theory, and lyric philosophy, we posit that understanding “signatures” metaphorically, as a reflection of the “shape of the world”, offers insights into the interconnectedness of all life forms—a profound affirmation of relational coherence between humans and the more-than-human. We advocate for another perspective on DoS: one which holds potential towards reorienting and restoring our relationships in the vibrant world of the Anthropocene.

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Grapheme–phoneme correspondence learning in parrots

Cunha,

Hirskyj-Douglas,

Kleinberger

et al. 2023

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Symbolic representation acquisition is the complex cognitive process consisting of learning to use a symbol to stand for something else. A variety of non-human animals can engage in symbolic representation learning. One particularly complex form of symbol representation is the associations between orthographic symbols and speech sounds, known as grapheme–phoneme correspondence. To date, there has been little evidence that animals can learn this form of symbolic representation. Here, we evaluated whether an Umbrella cockatoo (Cacatua alba) can learn letter-speech correspondence using English words. The bird-participant was trained with phonics instruction and then tested on pairs of index cards while the experimenter spoke the word. The words were unknown to the bird and the experimenter was blinded to the correct card position. The cockatoo’s accuracy (M = 71%) was statistically significant. Further, we found a strong correlation between the bird’s word-identification success and the number of overlapping letters between words, where the more overlapping letters between words, the more likely the cockatoo answered incorrectly. Our results strongly suggest that parrots may have the ability to learn grapheme–phoneme correspondences.

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Use of a Tablet-Based Communication Board and Subsequent Choice and Behavioral Correspondences in a Goffin's Cockatoo (Cacatua goffiana)

Cited by 8 publications

References 34 publications

Developing a Preference Scale for a Bear: From “Bearly Like” to “Like Beary Much”

Developing a Preference Scale for a Bear: From “Bearly Like” to “Like Beary Much”

Relationality and Metaphor—Doctrine of Signatures, Ecosemiosis, and Interspecies Communication

Grapheme–phoneme correspondence learning in parrots

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