Memory for action events in the bottlenosed dolphin
- Eduardo Mercado III, Robert K. Uyeyama, Adam A. Pack, and Louis
M. Herman
- (c) 1980 John Wiley and Sons
We investigated whether a bottlenosed dolphin’s ability
to recall and repeat actions on command would immediately generalize
to actions performed with specified objects. The dolphin was
tested on her ability to repeat 18 novel behaviors performed
with potentially interchangeable objects specified using an
artificial gestural language. Such “action events’’
were correctly repeated at above chance levels, indicating that
the dolphin had access memories of those events. Performance
levels were, however, lower than previous tests. The dolphin
appeared to have difficulty recalling which object an action
was performed with. Previous research has demonstrated that
animals can recall features of their environment and features
of their actions independently of one another. The results of
this study demonstrate (1) that the dolphin’s concept of
repeating extends beyond simply accessing memories of movement
patterns, and (2) that the dolphins’ memories of past events
incorporate representations of both self-performed acts and
objects, locations, or gestural instructions.
Mercado, E. III, Uyeyama, R.K., Pack, A.A., & Herman, L.M.
(1999). Memory for action events in the bottlenosed dolphin. Animal
Cognition, 2, 17-25.
Back to Top
Dolphin
Programs | Whale
Programs | Education
Programs | Our Research
| Resource Guide
Copyright © 2002, The Dolphin Institute
|
