- Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Hawaii, Honolulu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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