- Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
- 1993, Vol. 122, No. 2, 184-194
- 0096-3445/93
Responses to Anomalous Gestural Sequences by a Language-Trained
Dolphin: Evidence for Processing of Semantic Relations and Syntactic
Information
- Louis M. Herman
- Department of Psychology and Kewalo Basin Marine Mammal Laboratory,
- University of Hawaii)
-
- Stan A. Kuczaj II
- Department of Psychology, Southern Methodist University
-
- Mark D. Holder
- Department of Psychology, Okanagan College, Victoria, British
Columbia, Canada
-
- (C) 1993 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.
This study examined the responses of a bottlenosed dolphin (Tursiops
truncatus) to "normal" (semantically and syntactically
correct) sequences of gestures and to anomalous sequences given
within an artificial gestural language highly familiar to m animal.
Anomalous sequences violated the semantic rules or syntactic constraints
of the language. The dolphin discriminated anomalous fro, mpr,a;
seqiemces om that rejections (refusals to respond) occurred to some
anomalous sequnces but never to normal sequences. Rejection rarely
occurred, however, if the anomalous sequence contained a subset
of gestures that would comprise a normal unit if joined together.
Such units were typically perceived by the dolphin and responded
to even if they consisted of gestures that were not sequentially
adjacent. All semantic elements of a sequence were processed by
the dolphin in relation to other elements before the dolphin organized
its final response. The results show the importance of both semantic
properties and semantic relations of the referents of the gestures
and of syntactic (ordering) constraints in the dolphin's interpretations
of the anomalies. (C) 1993 by the American Psychological Association,
Inc.
- Herman, L.M., Kuczaj, S. A. II, & Holder, M. D. (1993).
Responses to Anomalous Gestural Sequences by a Language-Trained
Dolphin: Evidence for Processing of Semantic Relations and Syntactic
Information. Journal of Experimental Psychology, General,
122, 184-194.
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