Communication through Television
Television scenes are in most cases representations of the real
world. As human, we recognize this, and interpret and often respond
to the scenes as we might to real world events. Most animals, however,
do not seem to understand interpret TV images. A dog or cat, for
example, rarely displays
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| Researchers are able to communicate with
the dolphin from a remote location via television. |
any significant awareness that something meaningful is happening on
the television screen. Even chimpanzees, our closest relatives, fail
to interpret television scenes spontaneously. When first encountering
television, they may act as if they perceive only colors and movement,
rather than scenes. Chimpanzees can learn to interpret television
scenes appropriately eventually, by observing their human companion
responding appropriately. In contrast to the learning process that
seems required for chimpanzees, the dolphins at our laboratory proved
capable of understanding gestural language instructions given through
television images of people the very first time they were exposed
to television. We simply directed a dolphin to swim to an underwater
window. Behind the window was small television screen displaying a
live image of a person using
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| Dolphin views underwater television screen
for instructions. |
the gestural language. Each dolphin sent to the window responded appropriately
to most of a whole set of instructions given. Furthermore, they subsequently
also responded accurately to highly abstracted images, such as the
disembodied arm and hands of a person gesturing or event to spots
of light tracing patterns on the television screen that represented
the movements of a person's arms and hands. These demonstrations revealed
that the dolphins interpreted television scenes as representations
of the real world that they could act on in the same manner as they
acted on the real world. The ease with which dolphins can recognize
visual materials of this sort demonstrates that they are in fact highly
visual animals as well as acoustic animals, making their way through
their world by both sight and sound. This view runs counter to the
older ideas of dolphins as primarily acoustic specialists, relying
almost exclusively on passive listening and active echolocation to
inspect their underwater world.
Herman, L. M., Morrel-Samuels, P. and Pack, A.
A. (1990). Bottlenosed dolphin and human recognition of veridical
and degraded video displays of an artificial gestural language.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 119, 215-230.
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