Communication

Question 1

what is communication?

Answer 1

the sending and receiving of information

Question 2

why do animals communicate?

Answer 2

• long term reasons: to survive and reproduce
• short term reasons: alarms, food, mate attraction

Question 3

Honeybee dance, karl von Frisch (1919)

Answer 3

• won nobel prize 1973
• honeybees communicate about location of food
• if food < 100m turns in a circel to the left and then the right, continues to alternate for about half a minute, other bees then gather round then fly off
• if food is more than 100m away the bee will waggle from side to side while running in a straight line
• distance of food is indicated by the duration of the waggle run and bearing indicated by the angle of the waggle run

Question 4

What evidence has been found to support the waggle dance in bees?

Answer 4

• Michelsen et al. (1992) – mechanical bee. Bees use distance and direction info.
• Riley et al. (2005) – used transponders to measure flight paths.

Question 5

How do Vervet monkeys use alarm calls to communicate, Struhsaker (1967)

Answer 5

• observations in Amboseli national park in Kenya
• Found 21 distinct messages from 3 major predators (leopards, snakes, eagles)
• study found monkeys have different acoustic signals to signal for each predator
• when experimenters played the alarm calls even when no predators around, monkeys still responded

Question 6

alarm calls in meerkats, Manser (2001)

Answer 6

• found they have different alarm calls depending on the type of predator (aerial, terrestrial, recruitment)
• calls also include information about the level of urgency e.g. if the predator was far away the urgency is low

Question 7

what are the 4 language criteria? Pearce (2008)

Answer 7

Arbitrariness of units
- e.g., words usually randomly represent an event.
Semanticity
- there is a meaning.
Displacement
- communication about events distant in time or space.
Productivity
- structured according to rules but can be used flexibly.

Question 8

ASL in apes, Gardner & Gardner (1969)

Answer 8

• Washeo the chimp
• used shaping and instrumental conditioning on a chimpanzee to learn ASL
• after 5 years of training 132 signs were allegedly learnt
• words learnt includes, pronouns, verbs, and chimp could also allegedly combine signs e.g. ‘water and ‘bird’ for a swan

Question 9

ASL in apes, Terrace et al (1979)

Answer 9

• chim, Nim, learnt 125 signs by the end of the project
• chimp could produce linear combinations, and could combine 1.1-1.6 words

Question 10

chimps learning using visual symbols, Premack and Premack (1972)

Answer 10

• Yerkish (Duane Rumbaugh)
• Lana (chimpanzee) trained to use a keyboard.
• Symbols (lexigrams) have symbolic value but are arbitrary
• Sarah (chimpanzee; David Premack) Plastic tokens, again arbitrary.
• Rivas (2005) – studied sign use by chimpanzees.
  86% were requests.

Question 11

Dolphins and sentences, Herman, Richards, and Wolz (1984)

Answer 11

• Dolphin Akeakamai trained to perform a gesture and rewarded if performed it correctly
• had an observer watch the behaviour wthout knowing what it should be
• one test was a displace reference test, the dolphin had to find an object before she could perform a gesture. Action (81.4% correct).
• also tested on sementically reversible sentences that the dolphin must understand to complete. e.g. HOOP FETCH PIPE (go to hoop & take it to the pipe), PIPE FETCH HOOP (go to the pipe and take it to the hoop). 52.4% correct (0 reversal errors).