Lecture 9 - Language and communication

Question 1

What is communication?

Answer 1

it occurs when 1 organism transmits a signal to another organism that is capable of responding appropriately to that signal

Question 2

Honey Bee - Von Frisch 1974?

Answer 2

• Showed how bees transmit information (communicate) about the location of food that they’ve discovered
• The foraging bee returns to the hive and recruits other workers to search for food in the same location using one of two dances
  1. round dance = when food source is less than 100m from the hive
  2. waggle dance = when food is more than 100m

Question 3

Vervet monkey - Seyfarth and Cheney?

Answer 3

• Seyfarth and Cheney described three very specific alarm calls made by Vervet monkeys in response to certain predators
• Knowledge of what the calls mean is not innate, the calls are learned in childhood

Question 4

Chomsky?

Answer 4

Asserted that because all language conforms to rules of grammar, humans must have a language acquisition device in their minds, that will not be found in animals

Question 5

Macphail?

Answer 5

• Argued that there is no evidence for differences in the intelligence of different species, other than between humans and all other animals
• This difference is due entirely to our ability to use language

Question 6

Hockett’s criteria of language?

Answer 6

• Came up with a criteria to define language, language must have:
  -> discrete units
  -> arbitrary units
  -> semanticity = meaning
  -> displacement
  -> productivity through syntax = ability to come up with new explanations/sentences that have been uttered before

Question 7

Furness (1916) female orang-utan?

Answer 7

attempted to train an orang-utan and a chimp, respectively, to speak, but these studies had very limited success, partly due to the physical limitations of apes’ ability to produce speech

Question 8

Hayes and Hayes - Vicki a chimp?

Answer 8

taught her how to speak

Question 9

Gardner & Gardner (1969) Washoe (chimpanzee)?

Answer 9

• taught American sign language
• could produce 132 words after 4 years of training
• also used syntax to create new words

Question 10

Premack (1971) Sarah?

Answer 10

• trained Sarah, another chimpanzee, to use symbols on cards that each meant a different word
• Sarah learned 130 words including nouns, adjectives and verbs, and had to place the cards in the correct order (syntax) to be rewarded = learnt the rules of how language worked

Question 11

Rumbaugh & Savage-Rumbaugh?

Answer 11

• Kanzi
• used a lexigram = has symbols on it
• had to point at the lexigram to create sentences
• Kanzi learnt from a young age about the lexigram
• had to point to symbols in the correct order to get rewarded

Question 12

Terrace (1979) Nim?

Answer 12

• trained a chimp (Nim) to sign ASL
• however there was no grammatical structure to what Tim said
• However, despite Terrace’s conclusions there’s no doubt that, although difficult to show, some apes, like Sarah, are able to produce grammatically correct sentences
• However evidence that animals can acquire and reproduce grammatically correct language is lacking