- Journal of Experimental Psychology
- Animal Behavior Processes, Vol. 15, no. 2, 124-136
-
Generalization of visual matching by a bottlenosed dolphin (tursiops
truncatus): Evidence for invariance of cognitive performance with
visual and augitory materials. (1989)
- Louis M. Herman and John D. Gory, University of Hawaii, John
R. Hovancik, Seton Hall University, Gary L.Bradshaw, University
of Colorado.
-
- (C) 1989 by the American Psychological Association.
Generalization of a visual matching-to-sample rule was shown for
the first time in a bottlenosed dolphin (Tursiops truncatus),
normally considered an auditory specialist. The visual items used
were all read-world objects. Some objects had acoustic names in
an artificial acoustic language taught to the dolphin named Phoenix.
Other objects were unnamed but familiar to Phoenix, and still
others were objects entirely new to her experience. In Experiment
1 and 2, we demonstrated Phoenix's ability to match these objects,
from among two alternative comparison objects, at levels of 87%
correct responses or better, after 0-s delay . In Experiment 3,
Phoenix's matches of familiar and of new objects were better than
94% correct through to delays of 30 s and were 73% correct after
a delay of 80 s. In Experiment 4, performance was nearly eqiuvalent
for statically displayed and dynamically displayed sample objects.
Over the four experiments, Phoenix matches 16 of 18 objects successfully
on the first trial that they appeared as samples. From these and
other recent findings, it appears that bottlenosed dolphins are
capable of carrying out both visual- and auditory-based complex
cognitive tasks approximately equally well, a finding at variance
with earlier notions of sensory modality limitations in cognitive
performance of animals.
-
- Herman, L. M., Hovancik, J.R., Gory, J.D. & Bradshaw, G.L.
(1989). Generalization of visual matching by a bottlenosed dolphin
(Tursiops truncatus): Evidence for invariance of cognitive performance
with visual or auditory materials. Journal of Experimental
Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 15, 124-136.
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