- Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Hawaii, Honolulu
Determinants of perception of gestural signs in an artificial
language by bottlesnosed dolphins and humans
- Shyan, M. R.
University of Hawaii, Kewalo Basin Marine Mammal Lboratory, 1129
Ala Moana Blvd., Honolulu, HI, USA, 96814
-
- (C) 1985 University of Hawaii
Human perceptions (of hearing individuals) were compared to the
perceptions of Atlantic bottlenosed dolphins (Tursiops Truncatus)
on the critical sign components (those elements necessary for
recognition and discrimination of signs) for hand signals developed
in the artificial language-stimulating visual communication system.
One dolphin, having had six years of training with the visual
communication system (an artificial sign language) was shown to
numerous components of signs in various combinations, interspersed
with normal signs, over a 14 week period. A second dolphin, familiar
with some of these signs, but not in the language training context,
was tested as a nonlingual control. Their behavior responses were
taken to represent meaningful interpretations of the modified
signs. Human interpretations of the modified signs were collected
in a parallel task.
Humans were tested in tow conditions. The language context condition
paralleled the sign language dolphin’s testing condition
in that subjects were tested with linguistic signs. The non-language
context condition paralleled the non-sign-language dolphin’s
testing condition in that subjects were tested with non-language
signs. Human subjects also provided a confidence rating (a one
to five scale) for each response.
Response latencies were collected for the both humans and dolphins.
Results suggest that the subjects tested in a language context
develop hierarchical patterns of feature salience, Subjects tested
in a non-language context use overall or whole sign recognition
systems. All four groups differed in a relative feature salience
and in the predictive capacities of specific features on speed
and responding, number of responses per target sign, and confidence
in responses. The sign language dolphin attended (in order of
importance) to location, gross motor motion, and normal temporal
patterns as hierarchically salient features. Fine motor motion,
hand-shape, and hand orientation were less salient. The non-sign
language dolphin attended to all the sign features equally and
was not affected by the changes in temporal patterns of signs.
Results indicate that, for humans, linguistic versus non-linguistic
testing context plays a role in subject responding. For dolphins,
linguistic (sentence comprehension) and enriched signing experience
after the subject responding.
Both human groups were also tested on live versus videotape presentation
of the sign identification task. Video presentation did not modify
subject responding. Testing by videotape is a viable method and
results generalize to real-world settings.
Shyan, M. R. (1985). Determinants of perception of gestural signs
in an artificial language by bottlesnosed dolphins and humans.
Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Hawaii, Honolulu.
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