Communication and Language Flashcards
What is the purpose of the waggle dance and which animal performs it
Honey bees
Provides travel instructions to others
Describe the waggle dance
Figure 8 shape with a straight section in the middle
What is the length of the waggle run proportionate to
Distance to food source
What is the waggle run
The straight section in the middle
What is the tempo of the waggle dance proportional to?
Quality of food source
What does the angle of the waggle dance represent
Angle of dance to vertical is same as direction of food source relative to the sun’s azimuth
What three factors of an animal have an effect on another animal
Appearance, sound, smell
What is a signal
any act or structure which alters the behaviour of other organisms, which evolved because of that effect, and which is effective because teh receivers response has also evolved
What is a cue
Any feature of the world, animate of inanimate, that can be used by an animal to guide future action
What are four examples of information that animals communicate?
- Species
- Identity, sex, status
- Motivational state
- Perception/knowledge of the environment
What are five channels through which messages are conveyed?
Visual
Auditory
Chemical
Behavioral
Multimodal
What are the two things we can distinguish between
What a signal is designed to do
How a dignal is designed to do it
What is signal design influenced by
the perception (senses) and cognition (learning and memory) available to the receiver
What is signal design known as
Receiver psychology
What are three important considerations in signal design
- Detectability
- Discriminability
- Memorability
What are two examples of dishonest (manipulative) signaling
A chick could beg more vigorously to trick parent into giving more food than needed
A dog could growl to indicate its about to attack to trick another dog into backing down, even if it is the weaker of the two and has no intention to attack
What happens if signals are dishonest too often
Receivers stop responding or raise threshold for responding
What does frequent dishonest signaling lead to
Signals becoming exaggerated
What is an example of signals becoming exaggerated as a result of dishonesty
Female peacock wants to make sure she chooses the strongest, healthiest male, so her offspring will also be strong and healthy
Male peacock wants to appear big, strong, healthy etc, so females will mate with him
So females prefer males with larger, healthier tails à male peacocks grow bigger tails à females set the bar higher and become even choosier à etc
What are four ways in which the honesty of signals can be ensured
Common interest
Indices
Handicaps
Reoutation
How does common interest ensure the honesty of signals
When it is in the common interest of sender and receiver that the message that is communicated is accurate
How do indices ensure the honesty of signals
When the signal cannot be ‘faked’
How do handicaps ensure the honesty of signals
When a signal of the sender’s quality/ability/status is so costly that only those that can “afford” it can produce it
How does reputation ensure the honesty of signals
When there are repercussions to being dishonest through e.g. ostracism or punishment or being ignored in future by other group members
Give an example of common interest signaling
Bees of the same hive are highly genetically related. Therefore what benefits one bee, will also benefit the other (even if indirectly)
A dishonest signal (e.g. directing another bee to a food source that doesn’t exist) would be detrimental to the sender as well as the receiver.
Give an example of indices signaling
In red deer, roaring is used to settle contests between males. The deeper a stag’s the roar, the more likely the other will back down and the contest will be settled without actual fighting.
A large larynx (and therefore a large body) is needed to produce a deep roar – it cannot be faked. Smaller stags physically cannot produce deep roars.
Therefore, the roar provides an honest signal (or ‘index’) of the stag’s body size and hence fighting ability.
Give an example of handicap signaling
The male peacock’s tail hinders its ability to fly or escape from predators
A male with a large tail is advertising that it is able to survive despite having such a ‘handicap’ à therefore it must be exceptionally strong/healthy
A similarly large tail on a lowerquality male would be too costly – it cannot afford it
Give two examples of reputation signaling
Young vervet monkeys that give inappropriate alarm calls are ignored by adults
Subordinate mandrills that signal aggressive intentions are ignored by dominants
How common is reputation signaling and what is needed for it
Examples are rare - Needs stable social groups (repeated encounters between individuals) and complex cognitive abilities (individual recognition, memory for specific past interactions)
How does the diversity of language vary
By region
How do we cluster languages?
into language families: resemblances indicate descent from common ancestral languages
How many languages are expected to disappear within the next century
Up to 80%
How is language faculty divided?
Divided into Broad (FLB) and Narrow (FLN) sense
What is FLB
all the different mental and physical capacities that make language possible.
What is FLN
the bits (if any) specific to humans and to language
What are the 11 key features of language?
Infinite
Discrete
Semantic
Arbitrary
Syntactical
Productive
Recursive
Can express displacement in space and time
Learnable and is transmitted culturally
Capacity for prevarication
Modality Independent
Infinite component of language
smaller, meaningless units (phonemes) combine into larger meaningful ones (words) which themselves combine into yet more complex meaning (sentences) in theoretically infinite combinations (≈ “Duality of patterning”)
Discrete component of language
not analogue signal that can vary in intensity; units are discrete, system digital
