Lecture 10

Communication; Learning from Others

• Course is Psychology 2210B with instructor Krista Macpherson, PhD, March 31st, 2025.

Overview of Communication Topics

• Features of communication will be covered.
• The cost-benefit framework including honest signalling, deceitful signalling and eavesdropping will be analyzed.
• Focus on features of human language.
• Studies in other primates, including ASL and chimps (Nim), Sarah, lexigrams, and Kanzi will be discussed.

Communication vs. Language

• A video link is provided for additional information.

Features of Communication

• Communication happens almost continuously.
• Communication examples: Ants use chemoreception, dogs mark with urine, bird song, butterfly coloring, and newspapers.
• It includes a wide variety of behaviors and perception through different senses.

Signals, Senders and Receivers

• Communication occurs when a sender transmits information through signals to a receiver.
• Not all behavior is a signal, and it can be hard to tell the difference.
• Early ethologists studied interactions in species, commonly stereotyped and repeated behaviors in specific situations like courtship.

Cost-Benefit Framework

• Interactions don't always mean there's communication.
• Information transfer might be on purpose or not.
• Signals can be honest (+/+), dishonest (+/-), or eavesdropping (-/+).
• If both sender and receiver have a fitness cost (-/-), it is unlikely to happen.

Types of Signalling

• Honest signaling is known as "true communication" and involves cooperative interaction.
• Deceitful signaling is manipulation from the sender to affect the receiver, benefit the sender, and cost the receiver; an example is a hoax alarm call in drongos.
• Eavesdropping relates to cues and not necessarily intentional communication; for instance, when an owl hears a mouse looking for food.

Signal Set

• Humans possess an unlimited signal set and create new words as needed.
• Human language uses recursion for unlimited extension, embedding clauses.
• Animals typically have a limited signal set with a small set of signals in a small set of contexts.
• The FoxP2 gene has a role in communication, both in humans and animals.

Signals, Sender and Receivers

• Communication occurs also passively as in aposematism- bright coloring to denote toxicity/danger.
• Communication relies on the receiver processing the signal using a perceptual system.

Intention to Inform

• Humans use language with the intent to inform, tailoring wording to the receiver's understanding.
• The need to inform intersects occurs without Theory of Mind (TOM).
• The audience effect occurs when signaling changes based on the presence or response of the receiver.
• Giving alarm calls risks the signaler.

Information Use and Animal Signals

• Communication is fundamental for survival and reproduction.
• It affects the fitness of senders and receivers.
• Signals can be motivational or referential.
• Communication helps organisms adjust to social and ecological changes.
• Communication aids in deciding where to settle, forage, and whom to breed with.
• Communication is used to signal species identity, sex, toxicity, hunger, health status, dominance, and reproductive status

Deceptive Signalling

• The best interest of the signaler is not always in the best interest of the receiver.
• Posturing by males, such as chimps, is costly but exaggerates size and health.
• Dishonest signals may be used to deceive.
• A balance occurs as dishonest signals lead to developing abilities to distinguish honest vs. dishonest signaling by the receiver.

Mimicry

• Even passive signals carry information that can be deceptive for mimicry.
• Batesian mimicry involves a palatable species resembling an aposematic one, deceptively using a warning signal.
• Müllerian mimicry involves two unpalatable species that are co-mimics, and are an example of honest signaling.

Honest Signalling

• Zahavi's Handicap Principle suggests that costly traits like a peacock's tail signal high fitness because the male has survived predation despite the increased risk.
• Stotting in gazelles is an example of honest signalling because it makes them highly conspicuous.
• Aposematic species signal the threat they pose and are considered honest signallers.

Waggle Dance in Bees

• Von Frisch studied bees and how they communicated the whereabouts of nectar.
• On the honeycomb, returning bees perform a waggle dance, a straight "run" where the abdomen "waggles," ending with a turn.
• The bee alternates left and right turns after each run, making a figure-8.
• It indicates the location of food, which can be over 100m away.
• The length/duration is distance, the location is the angle.
• Spatial memory/path integration seems to be required.

Alarm Calls in Vervet Monkeys

• Struhsaker (1967) described how monkeys in Kenya use particular calls for different predators.
• The calls denote if a leopard is present, the eagle and snake.
• Other monkeys in hearing range respond accordingly.
• The response don't necessarily prove semanticity because the monkeys could have seen the behavior themselves.
• Seyfarth, Cheney, and Marler (1980) proved monkeys respond to semantic meaning of the defensive calls.

Alarm Calls of Others

• When two species coexist, an association forms between one's alarm call and what follows.
• Diana monkeys call in response to the alarm calls of chimps because they share a common threat of leopards..
• Social calls from chimps do not elicit Diana monkey responses.

Exploiting Alarm Calls of Others

• Fork-tailed drongos use calls signaling certain predators when predators are not present, which causes animals flee and drop food.
• This another type of deceptive behavior where up to 23% of the food is obtained this way.
• Drongos also imitate several vocalizations of other species, whether from their victim or species that the victim will respond to.
• If one call is not effective because of habituation, then the drongo will shift to another one of the calls where 51 different calls are known to be imitated.

Communication in Play

• Play fighting helps social species develop, but animals need a way to indicate that aggressive moves are part of play.
• Play markers are specific and stereotyped actions to start and maintain play.
• Dogs, juvenile wolves and coyotes will use a play bow.

Communication in Play

• Play is hard to define since signals often have multiple meanings.
• Bekoff & Byers defined play as motor activity performed postnatally that appears purposeless. If the activity is directed toward another living being it is known as social play.
• Play is thought to give practice in physical and social skillsneeded for survival into adulthood.

Spotted Hyenas

• Hyenas are unique as social mammals with a rigid female-dominated hierarchy.
• Kingdom: Animalia. Phylum: Chordata. Class: Mammalia. Order: Carnivora. Suborder: Feliformia.
• A video link is provided.

Pseudopenis of the Spotted Hyena

• A pseudopenis is the enlarged clitoris fused to labia, forming pseudoscrotum in females
• There is no external vaginal opening.
• Females give birth, urinate and copulate through it, which is dangerous/painful.
• The structure is a signal to other hyena. The genitalia is a signal meant to modify the behavior of the receiver.

Language

• A basic question is posed: how do animals communicate besides the ability to communicate?
• Humans use unique features of human language, proposed by Charles Hockett (1960)
• Hockett said these features include semanticity, arbitrariness, displacement, generativity, syntax, traditional transmission and duality of patterning.

Noam Chomsky

• Chomsky is theorist whose ideas were big in the cognitive revolution of psychology.
• He theorized language is unique to humans, via dedicated hardware like a universal grammar.
• His belief is that associative learning on its own cannot explain this phenomena.

The Cost of Speech

• Human infants have a soft palate between the tongue and epiglottis.
• This airway helps protect swallowing.
• Choking is still frequent due to teething as babies are prone to putting things in their mouth.
• The larynx descends in humans between 1-2 years, enabling speech.
• The vocal tract also increases shared breathing swallowing space.

Comparative Anatomy

• Voicebox anatomy isn't the only factor.
• The FOXP2 gene is important for speech production.

Sign Language in Chimpanzees

• Chimps cannot speak human language due to anatomical constraints, but maybe sign language is different.
• Gardner and Gardner (1969) worked with Washoe, and female chimp in Nevada.
• Washoe learned 132 signs in 51 months. She could then combined signs into phrases like"water bird" for a swan, and “cold rock" for ice.

Language with Plastic Symbols

• A chimp named Sarah learned to connect plastic symbols with different objects by placing symbols on a board.
• Her vocabulary grew to roughly 130 items.

Lana and Lexigrams

• Lana, a chimp, learned aspects of ASL and the plastic symbol method taught by Duane Rumbaugh.
• Lana used a computer to respond to lexigrams. These were combined to make phrases/sentences.
• She then was given sentence stems to complete, such as "Please Tim give".
• She was gradually trained to form valid sentences with a sequence of lexigrams in return for a reward.
• Lana learned to discriminate valid and invalid sentences in 90% of the trials.

Language Controversy & Nim

• The ape language project received different reviews, though there was excitement about the possibility of two-way communication between humans.
• Herbert Terrace tried to determine this by acquiring a chimp named Nim Chimpsky.
• Chomsky thought language was unique to humans; his theory was a factor in declining behaviorism.

Did Nim Have Language?

• Nim, like other chimps, learned 125 signs.
• Terrace examined Nim's syntax and human interactions.
• Nim had syntax and signed "brush me" rather than "me brush".
• Nim's MLU did not grow normally.
• He would mostly make 1-2 word sounds, with redundant longer utterances(ex: "give orange me give orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you").

Did Nim Have Language?

• Nim imitated his trainers often.
• Humans, on the other, learn to expand of the meaning what is said.
• Nim did not learn verbal interchange and never learned to wait when signing in conversation.
• Terrace et al. (1979) determined that Nim's communication was not close to language.
• Instead, he repeated after trainers, and put together the signs that lead to reward.

The Fallout

• Criticism was heavy about the ape language research.
• Some accused researchers of unethical experimentation.
• In many chimp studies, creative utterances were documented poorly or using gross statistics.
• When Washoe would sign "Water bird", it was considered a creative act, where the sign meant "Swan", independently of both the signs for bird + water.

Semanticity

• The chimpanzee studies are not focused on semantic meaning and referential expression.
• Humans may have overinterpreted the chimp ability in this regard.
• Is it not clear if chimps understand its symbolic representation?

What about Bonobos?

• Bonobo actions resemble human actions more than chimps.
• Kanzi, at 2.5 years old, learned lexigrams from his mother, Matata, with no formal training.
• Unlike Nim, Kanzi's language use was more meaningful after expanding past two or three words.
• Kanzi's wording usage was often less egocentric than Nim's.

Syntax in Dolphins

• In 1984, two dolphins were trained with visual gestures/auditory signals as commands.
• The dolphins performed correctly through experimentation, with the commands formed as sentences.
• All stimuli involved objects, nets, balls, hoops, or action words.
• Each dolphin was paired with the opposite stimulus.
• A "pipe, fetch, hoop" message means that one dolphin must carry the pipe to the hoop, while the other will do the opposite.

Syntax in Dolphins

• Dolphins had 5 words of directions given to them, where dolphins performed above chance and showed signs of understanding syntactic rules.

Does Chaser Have Syntax?

• Chaser the border collie was studied for syntactic skills using a verb, prepositional object, and direct object.
• He learned to respond to two stimuli, e.g.,'To ball take Frisbee', and the opposite, 'To Frisbee take ball'.
• He could recognize 100 toys for this, and understood how to select the right one.
• He could demonstrate syntax accurately to 75% of the time when tested.

Animal Cognition

• Animals do not use human language, but are able to perform in a number of cognitive areas that have been tested.
• An animal can be tested for many aspects like physical, social, spatial.

Learning From Others

• The studies explore who/what animals learn from.
• Japanese macaque washing sweet potatoes in the 1950s is one example of information being spread.
• It is not clear whether this happened from individual learning or following their instincts.

Social learning

• Learning is examined as related to conspecifics.
• For example, learning is shown in birds and chimps.
• An open question remains on animal culture.

Social vs. Asocial Learning

• Asocial learning depends on an animal's interaction with its particular environment, typically through associative learning.
• Asocial learning is not passed down between generations.
• Innovative behaviors in animals often lead to learning that that other species can learn this way.
• There are instance where asocial may be preferrable.

When to Engage?

• Because social learning need not be adaptive, animal learning is choosy-and it is important for what is learned.
• Laland (2004) said this depends on three stages, including when one's behavior becomes unproductive.
• First they copy others.
• Also is relevant is the high cost.
• It then occurs more when potential demonstrators share the environment, like rats.

Whom do they learn From?

• Learning success will depend on whether an individual is productive.
• Social learning happens when a demonstrator is identified.
• Demonstrators that successfully obtain food are followed.
• Some human children will follow an individual to obtain a tool, but not food.
• Another strategy is to conform to other animals.

Conformity

• The process of conforming has been proven in chimpanzees, where three of the same puts a ball in the same box.
• One chimp puts in a different ball after.
• Both the chimps and human children will use the plurality choice.

Learning Types

• Different types of social learning includes the effect of demonstration, learning the behaviors for motion/mechanics and more.

Enhancement

• Attention is drawn to particular stimulus or location, and generalization occurs with it.
• Once drawn to a place, learning occurs using experimentation.
• In British birds, blue tits will peck milk bottles in pecking behaviour which then extends out to the community.

Observational Conditioning

• One learns from association by watching another be have.
• An animal can show another conspecific object, the individual then is drawn to it because of its relationship and its own behavior.
• Higher order conditioning comes from experiencing events that then cause fear or attention.
• This method of conditioning in species and termites.

Emulation

• How something can move is demonstrated from others.
• Observer can be in different context from them with different meaning of outcomes.

Mimicry

• One learns a demonstration without knowing a full, complex understanding of endstate.
• This is usually a movement, like a toddler copying someone stepping on a scale.
• Usually also has effect in creating environment that builds rapport with demonstrator.

Imitation

• A signal with an underlying recognition that the recipient recognizes endstate.
• Can perform an action or movement that brings signals more closely, like keys or a car.
• Usually means blind imitation of end result.

Imitation in Orangutans?

• Further examples of imitation with links in dogs and orangutans.

Learning Food Preferences

• When animals have poison, they tend to not eat it and communicate their knowledge of the dangers to their offspring.
• Youngs learn food via parents.
• Food choices are communicated though conspecifics.

Mating

• Mate-choice has effects on gender quality.
• Some animals will emulate short cuts.

Bird Song

• Bird song is used primarily during mating to attract mates, or ward off other members.
• They depend usually contact in sensitive period.
• Can change resulting in "regional dialects."

Birds continued

• The spectrogram of bird population creates new musical patterns.
• They learn by doing and experience.

Bird Development

• A very early period allows them to develop by memory.
• Production comes as simplified over their life arc.
• Maturing allows storage until matched then crystalized.

Birds cont

• If born into isolation, vocalizations are incorrect.
• When song stimuli happens a critical period where song will develop, it can come from parents song but also stimuli.
• There are more vocalization responses when the stimulus is one of similar genetic species.

Bird Song with Time

• Song changes over period, when choosing and attracting females.
• Trills at ends change too.
• Buzz never changes, and shows species (Williams, 2008).

Object Learning

• Determine when imitation, or direct movement, occurs.

Bidirectional and Two-Action

• Learning two paths of behaviors is a determinant of success.
• In certain species of quails, they are made to distinguish, then observers are taught to copy motions.

Artificial Food

• In experiments, there are human manipulators that interact with other actors.
• Chimps are less precise.
• One group of monkeys focuses on only bolts, not demontrator.

Imitation vs Emulation

• Emulation happens for overmitation.
• Actions of imitation come from causal or social norms.

Animal Culture

• In 1999, population was studied, behaviors were more common between others.
• Traits can be explained via genetics or are social based.

Test/Exam

• There are methods that were taken for the wrap up and how best for studying.
• Test on April 9th, and review the items for content.
• Study topics include causality, learning, concepts.
• More topics include competence, mind, awareness.
• Communications with animals, language and signs all topics for study.
• And others around imitations vs copying.