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
Semantic component of language
fixed associations between meaningful elements (words) and their referents (targets)
Arbitraty component of language
semantic connection between word & target arbitrary
Syntactical component of language
units (words, phrases) follow rules of ordering; meaning can vary according to order
Productive component of language
can express things that have never been expressed before
Recursive component of language
clauses can be embedded in other clauses, and those in yet other clauses, and those in yet other clauses…
Displacement in space and time component of language
can refer to past, present, future; here vs distant location
Learnable/transmitted culturally component of language
speakers of one language can learn to speak others; children learn phonemes, words, grammar from listening to others
Capacity for prevarication component of language
can make false statements
Modality independent component of language
spoken, written, signed
What are we not covering in this lecture
Animals being taught human language
How many phenomes do human languages tend to contain
Few tens
How can phenomes be combined
Into a theoretically infinite variety of words
What other animals communicate vocally
Whales and dolphins
What do whales and dolphins not do?
Communicate in the same way as humans
Describe the phonology of the chestnut crowned babler
They have a double element (flight call) and a triple element (prompt call)
The individual elements are in themselves meaningless and are not used in isolation
What exists in non-human animal communication
Combinatorial rules
What is unsure about combinatorial rules
Whether different combinations bring about changes in meaning
What is an example of an animal that communicates via combinatorial rules
Captive bottlenose dolphins
Describe what happened in captive bottlenose dolphin communication
Two individuals trained (one acoustic, one gestural)
In tests, instructed to carry out named actions (fetch) on named objects (ball) and named modifiers (left)
What were captive bottlenose dolphins able to generalize
to sentences with novel lexical & structural information – including 5-word sentences
What two phrases could bottlenose dolphins generalize
SURFACE HOOP FETCH BOTTOM BASKET (go to the hoop at the surface and take it to the basket at the bottom)
BOTTOM BASKET FETCH SURFACE HOOP (go to the basket at the bottom and take it to the hoop at the surface)
What two things did the birdsong demonstrate
Hierarchical structure
Syntactic constraints
Describe hierarchical structure in the birdsong
Notes -> syllable -> motifs -> bouts
What is an example of syntactic constraints
upcoming motif often predictable from previous one
What does lack of semanticity in birdsong mean?
means that sequence changes are likely to alter message strength but not message type
What do referential signals mean
they refer to external objects or events and are meaningful to receivers
Which animal displays referential signals and what is the reason for it
Vervet monkey alarm calls
Describe Vervet monkey alarm calls
Specific to type of predator (bark call = leopard, cough call = eagle, chutter call = snake)
Different calls elicit different responses in receivers (“leopard”: climb tree; “eagle”: look up then run for cover; ”snake” = rear up & search)
What are four other examples of animals that use referential signals
Siberian jay predator alarm calls
Meerkat predator alarm calls
Chimpanzee food calls
Dog growls for different social situations
What quote by Townsend and Manser describes referential signals
“One of the difficulties lies in distinguishing calls induced by external referents rather than being the expression of the emotional and motivational state of an animal experiencing a given behavioural context”
What animal potentially exhibits semanticity and syntax
Campbell monkey
What is an important note about campbell monkey alarm calls
the same suffix has this effect in both cases – “-oo” acts as abstract meaning operator
Describe how the Campell monkey potentially demonstrates semanticity and syntax
In their alarm calls, “-oo” suffix transforms predator-specific calls into calls indicating less specific (but spatially defined) disturbance
What is learnability
Speakers of one language can learn to speak another
What two animals can learnability be seen in
Populations of birds
Humpback whales
How do populations of birds demonstrate learnability
Different dialects are used by different populations of birds and cetaceans; migration events can lead to dialect changes
How do Humpback Whales demonstrate learnability
their song revolution…
Different humpback whale songs are spreading east with each successive year à “cultural waves”
What is prevarication
Ability to make false statements
What is an example of prevarication and why is this done
Chimpanzee recruitment screams (~calls for help when attacked)
Describe Chimpanzee recruitment screams
Acoustic structure varies with severity of aggression
Victims exaggerated true level of aggression (only) if there was at least one listener in the audience who matched or surpassed the aggressor in rank
What is displacement
Message refers to objects/events removed from present in space or time
Give two examples of displacement
Honeybee “waggle dance”
Symbol-trained chimpanzees
How does the Honeybee waggle dance show displacement
Signifies location distant from signaller and receiver
Signifies location distant from signaller and receiver
How do symbol-trained chimpanzees demonstrate displacement
Subjects can indicate type and location of object hidden at distant (though <30m)
What may be missing in displacement
Temporal displacement
What is a possible example of temporal displacement being missing
wild orangutans delay alarm calling for predator until it is out of sight – i.e. give info about a past encounter?
What is unique about recursion and who proposed this idea
Proposed by Hauser, Chomsky & Fitch (2002) to be the only feature of language unique to humans (i.e. the only element in the FLN subset)
What is recursion
Embedding of a constituent in a constituent of the same type
Give an example of center-embedding
The man with the dog saw the woman
Give an example of tail-embedding
The man with the dog saw the woman
Give two examples of infinite recursion
“[The man [with the dog [that bit the girl [with the pearl earring [that we took [from the ……. ]]]] saw the woman]”
“The watch that belongs to my uncle’s friend’s cousin’s girlfriend’s housemate’s driving instructor’s ……..”
What is infinite recursion limited by
Memory
Give an example embedding of a constituent in a constituent of the same type
If the clause is AB, then AAABBB exhibits recursion (where AB is center-embedded in another AB, which is embedded in another AB)
What two animals have studies looked for recursion in
Songbirds and primates
Describe the studies in which recursion was looked for in songbirds and primates
Task: listen to playback of stream of sequences of A and B syllables, indicate when you notice ABABAB structure changing into AAABBB or vice versa
Task: listen to playback of stream of sequences of A and B syllables, indicate when you notice ABABAB structure changing into AAABBB or vice versa
Task: listen to playback of stream of sequences of A and B syllables, indicate when you notice ABABAB structure changing into AAABBB or vice versa
Describe a follow up study of recursion in Starlings
Using more natural sounds (starling song motifs), Gentner et al (2006) suggest starlings can process different types of patterning rules, including center-embedded recursive structures
a’s and b’s are different types of “rattle” and “warble” motifs
What two things did starlings show
a’s and b’s are different types of “rattle” and “warble” motifs
a’s and b’s are different types of “rattle” and “warble” motifs
What is the caveat of the Starling study
no test of generalization to other kinds of motifs (not rattle/warble) à might have been that the birds learnt something more simple about acoustic qualities of the stimuli …. ALSO: trained rather than innate?
