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/
Have fun!
cheers
Uli
The idea of dolphin whistles functioning as group identification is a neat one; the term signature whistle is clearly defined and each whistle type is identified. The spectrograms shown on page 2541 are so instinct from one another! In this paper, the authors investigated the association between whistle type and its function in a way that I believe is persuasive. They first excluded the possibility of whistle exchange happening only by chance (by exact randomization test, p < .05). Second, the context, the time interval, and the location of whistle exchange occur were documented and explored. Thirdly, the type and patterning of vocal whistling were analyzed through sequential SIGID analysis, confirming that at least 50% of whistles in exchange were signature whistles, which have a certain identifying characteristics.
ReplyDeleteThe approach used by Quick & Janik’s paper is somehow similar to human’s vocal research (sound spectrogram). In contrast, Blomqvist, Mello, & Amundin used pulse repetition rate (PRR) and duration of the bursts, two methods that I have not heard before, to identify signals produced under play-fight situation. In PRR, harmonics are the measure targets, whereas formants are the measure targets in human speech. It makes sense though, in that dolphins do not have such flexibility in their vocal cavity as humans do to shape sound resonances. What they have is the sound source therefore the harmonics! It is just amazing to see how signals can be produced variously and serve with versatility.
The paper by Xitco, John, Gory, & Kyczaj on dolphin’s pointing behavior associated with the behavior of a receiver is also very interesting. It seems that the dolphin’s communication intent is right in place maybe long before any communicative behavior are demonstrated.
Kuczai and Kirkpatrick’s article on “Comparative Psychology of Language” was very interesting for me. I appreciate the fact that the authors recognize that our understanding of what language is is far from being adequate or complete (see p. 48). Yet, the authors seem to be a bit liberal in their usage of the term “language”; for example, they assume without further ado that we can talk about “animal language”. The authors say that taking human language to judge the “language” skills of other species reflects an arrogant attitude. However, in the paper they can’t help taking human language as a standard as we can see, for example, on page 55 where they propose to investigate “paradigmatic relations” in animals, which are a kind of semantic relations that so far we have observed only in human language. I think that instead of accusing each other of being arrogant we should reflect on what constraints come from the fact that it us humans that study other animals and perhaps we should look at these constraints not as obstacles, but as the positive conditions of our knowledge.
ReplyDeleteOn page 55 the authors distinguish between categorical and non-categorical language. By the latter they mean a system where units are individual sounds. It is not clear to me how such a system would be possible. Indeed, an individual sound occurs only once and in a particular space, and if it is repeated in another time and space it is no longer the same individual sound event, but another. It seems that sounds need to repeatable in order to constitute unites of language; but if they are repeatable they are to some extent “categorical”, not individual sounds (which are individualized by having precise spatiotemporal coordinates). It would be useful to have an example of what the authors have in mind when they talk about individual sounds as units of language. Another question I have regards the assertion that “lexical syntax has also been observed in natural animal languages (Cleveland & Snowdown, 1982; Robinson, 1984)”. I would be curious to know more about these abilities.
Dolphins produce their signature whistle also in captivity, when they are separated from the rest of the group. Does this mean that the signature whistle is done automatically and without the intention to communicate? However, this would not contradict the fact that dolphins are elicited to produce the signature whistle when they are approaching another group. It was interesting to read that dolphins produce a specific sound to let others know when they want to engage in a fight-play as opposed to an aggressive attack. Joint attention is important also for dolphins. It seems to me that the training method used for Alex is a great example of joint attention. Is this correct?
Do animals have languages? I wrote a comment on the other day that animals may not have languages after joining the seminar for several weeks. However, Dr. Pepperberg’s bird study helps me reconsider this statement. Kuczaj and Kirkpatrick’s article also discusses the issue: we use our criteria to judge/observe animal communication. As discussed last week, our languages may be decoded by birds because they learned our languages, but we haven’t had a clue about their songs yet.
ReplyDeleteThe other question is about dolphin pointing by Xitco et al. Are two dolphins domesticated at Walt Disney World since they were born? We probably can only conclude from this article that they have pointing behaviors when they are in captivity with humans. But there should be or already have joint attention studies at sea like the exchange signature whistles article. Monitoring and pointing should be used to show things or events occurring at sea between/among dolphins if they really have these behaviors.
After reading all the papers, I have learned a great deal about how dolphins in particular are able to communicate in their aquatic environment. The Blomqvist et al (2005) paper stated that dolphins lack the ability to express emotions by means of facial expressions, erecting fur, wagging tail, or other elaborate body postures to communicate, unlike terrestrial animals such as primates. Conversely, they use a unique repertoire of sounds in order to communicate amongst each other. From this, the question that I have is can dolphins not communicate via body language? For instance, if a dolphin is slapping its tail on the surface of the water, is it not communicating?
ReplyDeleteIn the papers, I also learned that the pulse burst sounds of bottlenose dolphins are primarily used to avoid physical aggression in situations involving high excitement such as when there is competition for food. For example, the dolphins may emit these sounds when in the presence of other dolphins moving towards the same prey. As such, how do the dolphins know when to stop/avoid confrontation? Is it based upon the dolphin with the loudest pulse burst sound or some other factor?
Within these various studies on animal communication, I am always surprised at the level of communication within animals. However, while there is obvious correlations being brought to attention, I am always a bit concerned about the possible disconnect between human versus animal communication. More specifically, I wonder if it is possible to be truly objective without projecting our own logic upon the studies. For example, within the study of the pointing gesture, while the study interprets the gesture with a communicative sort of pointing, it brings about two questions. 1) Is the dolphin gesturing out of frustration? 2) Since this scenario maybe doesn’t necessarily happen innately, are we imposing our logic upon the dolphin/grey’s parrot/orangutan by the virtue that they can be trained to do such tasks? For example, if I ask my phone “Siri, where is school?” it will tell me where and how to get to school, however, Siri may not really be thinking. Moreover, is Siri really using a communicative gesture? Rather, it is doing what it has been programmed to do, it has little choice or deliberation. This brings about another question: does it matter if the gestures are trained or happen innately? Obviously they show a sort of communicative flexibility, however, is it showing the communicative processes we think it is? Specifically, are we projecting our own logic and emotions on the situation. For example, Alex the parrot always said, “Goodnight, I love you,” to the trainer; this suggests a great deal of personal involvement with the subject and the word love has been taught to Alex. While very touching, after all it is hard to not feel that affection towards animals, does this suggest a projection of the researcher onto the experiment? I don’t know if I see a huge difference between that and the Stanford Prison Experiment. Specifically, does personal involvement skew results, or is it even possible to be truly objective when studying something like interpersonal/interspecies communication? These are not questioning any specific researcher or the present readings; however, they are a reoccurring set of questions and are purely based on my lack of familiarity with animal research.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed each reading for this week. I have a few technical questions concerning the dolphin signaling articles as well as a few questions on the Kuczaj & Kirkpatrick article about argument formation.
ReplyDeleteMy first question is on the Quick & Janik (2012) article about signal whistling of dolphins. How distinct are these signature whistles? Can two dolphins have essentially the same signature? To what degree can these calls be differentiated by the receiver? What are the constraints of these signature calls? I did see that “signal matching” was discussed, but I wasn’t sure if this was the result of two dolphins consciously choosing to match each other’s signal, or if this was a case where two dolphins just happened to have matched signals, by chance.
My second question is on the same article, where the authors explain that 50% of all recorded whistles in the wild were signature whistles. How frequently do dolphins whistle? Are these dolphins gossiping here, or is it more of an indicator that they are meeting each other frequently. I guess if I had a better understanding of dolphin pods, I would have a better understanding of why 50% of these signals are signature signals. Can dolphins recognize each other from visual features?
My last set of questions deal with the Kuczaj & Kirkpatrick article. First, and probably most important ( and may even alleviate many of my other issues with this paper) deals with the definition of language. How are the authors here choosing to operationalize language? My understanding of how language is typically defined is that language requires recursive features as well as symbolic features, and that these recursive and symbolic qualities set language apart from communication.
DeleteConcerning the morpheme section of the paper, have we established that units exist at all within animal communication? This may sound bizarre, but what if animal communication is so context dependent and subtle that there are no fixed units and instead there are no fixed parameters on any facet of the signals produced. For example, what if the similarity of a signal does not lie in the units of the signal, but instead in the pitch and context, or chemical communication that occurs alongside that pitch or context? Again, this appears to be humans attempting to anthropomorphize animal communication. If we are making a claim that animals have language, and humans have language, then we do we need to attach features of human language onto features of animal language. The general argument of this paper appears to be that we need to avoid the top-down approach to understanding animal communication, but this whole morpheme section appears to be doing just that.
At the bottom of the second paragraph on page 45, the authors explain that “The hypothesis that human language is unique is just that, a hypothesis. It has not been disproven (and perhaps never will be), but neither has it been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.” For curiosity’s sake, what -has- been proven beyond a shadow of doubt? For us to make this claim, do we really need to examine every single species on the planet? Or would we simply need to see the necessary biological components to produce cognition that is needed for language to exist within any species? Further, the authors later make the claim that “All in all, these findings suggest that species other than humans have the capacity for symbolic representation, and are capable of using conventional and arbitrary morphemes”. So, these studies suggest that symbolism may exist in animals, but d they suggest it in a way that is “beyond a shadow of doubt” -- because earlier in the paper the authors use as a basis for their argument that animal language exists because we have yet to prove beyond a shadow of doubt that it doesn't. I apologize if I come across as overbearing, but is this not an example of having your cake and eating it too? Can you base a claim that one thing is not true because exhaustive research has not taken place (on every species), and then say that symbolism -does- exist within animals based on research that does not prove something beyond a shadow of doubt? I ask these questions because I am still very much in the learning stages of constructing arguments for publication.
DeleteFor my first reply towards the end the sentence should read " If we are making a claim that animals have language, and humans have language, then do we need to attach features of human language onto features of animal language?" Sorry for the confusion.
DeleteThe papers about dolphin whistling were fascinating. I've heard that dolphins are very intelligent animals, but it still is amazing to me how different communication systems are among species and, yet, somehow humans are still able to find ways of communicating at an interspecial level that I don't think other animals can.
ReplyDeleteThe Kuczaj & Kirkpatrick addressed some questions that I've had over the course of this seminar. One thing that they mentioned that I hadn't really thought about (and I may be somewhat misinterpreting it) was the connection they made between investigating communication differences among the same species as well as different species as contributing to our determining what aspects of language are learned and what are innate. I mean, that makes sense, but putting it in an educational context in which we can use information like this to better help us know how to teach students was a connection I hadn't really considered before.