Animal Communication and Language Flashcards

These vocabulary flashcards cover the key theories, researchers, and experimental results regarding animal communication, levels of deception, and the linguistic criteria used to evaluate animal language.

Audience Effect

A phenomenon where alarm call production is influenced by the presence of others, such as being more likely when genetic relatives are present (Sherman, 1977).

Sherman (1977) Findings

Identified that calling comes at a cost, as the caller is more likely to be killed, but the behavior is moderated by the presence of kin.

Hoo

A quiet alert vocalization produced by chimpanzees in response to danger, such as discovering a snake.

Detector

In the Crockford et al. (2012) naturalistic experiment, the chimpanzee that saw the fake snake first.

Ignorant Receiver

A chimpanzee that did not see the detector discover the snake and did not hear an alert call.

Partially Knowledgeable Receiver

A chimpanzee that did not see the detector discover the snake but heard an alert call.

Fully Knowledgeable Receiver

A chimpanzee that observed the subject (detector) see the snake.

Dissociation between emotional reaction and vocalisation

The observation in chimpanzees that alarm calls were not immediate or based purely on fear, but were moderated by the knowledge level of others.

First-level Deception

An appearance-related innate programme, such as mimicry in insects (Mitchell, 1986).

Second-level Deception

A stimulus-response process, such as a plover feigning a broken wing to distract a predator (Mitchell, 1986).

Third-level Deception

Deceptive behavior resulting from learned association (Mitchell, 1986).

Fourth-level Deception

When an individual intentionally tries to create a false belief in another’s mind, such as human lying (Mitchell, 1986).

Photuris Fireflies

A genus of fireflies where females imitate the bioluminescent signals of the Photunis genus to attract and eat the males (Lloyd, 1975).

Concealment by Inhibiting Interest in Object (CIO)

A deceptive behavior where a subordinate macaque avoids looking at or moving towards food to prevent a dominant individual from finding it.

Distraction by Leading (DL)

A deceptive behavior where a subordinate animal moves away from food so that a dominant competitor follows them away from the resource.

Arbitrariness

A rule of language suggesting units should not look or sound like the thing they convey; onomatopoeia is a rare exception (Hockett, 1960).

Displacement

The ability of language to communicate about things that are not present in time or space, seen in Honey Bees and Apes.

Semanticity

A language rule where signals must have specific meanings, as demonstrated by Vervet monkeys and the Border Collie 'Pilly'.

Productivity

The ability to use the same units in different orders to create many different sentences, as tested in Dolphin studies.

Unintentional Cueing

The critique by Herb Terrace (1979) that Washoe the chimpanzee was being prompted by trainers rather than using language spontaneously.

Lexigram

A symbol representing a word used in Savage-Rumbaugh's studies to test language comprehension in apes like Kanzi.

Kanzi's Comprehension Rate

Correct on $72\%$ of all trials; however, performance dropped to $30\%$ when only ambiguous commands (where behavior was not constrained by possibility) were scored.