Dear Students!

For Halloween - the 31st of October - we will have Stan Kuczaj as a guest speaker to tell us all about "Why can't we speak with dolphins"!

Our presenters for this week will be:

ChiaCheng: Kucjay&Kirkpatrick and Xitco et al.
Kenneth: dolphin play signal -paper and dolphins exchange signature whistles-paper

As usual, you will find these papers on the UMdrive.

Check out Stan'swebsite to see all the other interesting topics Stan is working on with dolphins!

http://www.usm.edu/experimental-psychology/faculty/stan-kuczaj

Have fun!

cheers

Uli

Dear Students!

Next week we will have a speaker who is one of the most important researchers in the field of animal cognition and communication - Irene Pepperberg! She will tell us about the amazing things a "bird brain" is able to do. Please check out the numerous you-tube clips on Alex the parrot and his  colleagues!

Our presenters will be:

Stefano: Pepperberg&Gibson&Tallerman
Yuna: BrainBehaviorReview
Jeremy: Brain&Language Alex 2010a

As usual, you will find these papers on the UMdrive.

Have fun!

Uli

Dear Students!

This week we will get an overview about the anatomical facts - why non-human primates cannot produce speech, even if they try really hard - remember Vicki, the chimp?

Our presenters for this time are:

Yuna - Schultz et al. 05
Abby - Juergens 2009

You will find the papers again on the UMdrive, as usual!

have fun!

Uli

Dear Students!

So far, so good - now that we know quite a bit about modeling in this field, we will continue with a dip into the evo-devo research - one of the most exciting fields at the moment. Peter Lafreniere will give us an overview about this topic and talk about its relevance for the evolution of communication on the 10th of October.

Our presenters for this next seminar will be:

Keith - Kirby (evolution of language)
Stefano LaFreniere (the arrival of the fittest)
Yuna (DevReview 2012)

As usual, you will find these papers on the UMdrive. There are other papers in the folder that Peter recommended, as well as a book recommendation for people who want to go deeper, but only the three papers assigned above are obligatory to read.

Enjoy!!

Uli