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Wolf-speaker
With the help of her animal friends, Daine fights to save the kingdom of Tortall from ambitious mortals and dangerous immortals.
Book
Vocal-visual combinations in wild chimpanzees
Living organisms throughout the animal kingdom habitually communicate with multi-modal signals that use multiple sensory channels. Such composite signals vary in their communicative function, as well as the extent to which they are recombined freely. Humans typically display complex forms of multi-modal communication, yet the evolution of this capacity remains unknown. One of our two closest living relatives, chimpanzees, also produce multi-modal combinations and therefore may offer a valuable window into the evolutionary roots of human communication. However, a currently neglected step in describing multi-modal systems is to disentangle non-random combinations from those that occur simply by chance. Here we aimed to provide a systematic quantification of communicative behaviour in our closest living relatives, describing non-random combinations produced across auditory and visual modalities. Through recording the behaviour of wild chimpanzees from the Kibale forest, Uganda we generated the first repertoire of non-random combined vocal and visual components. Using collocation analysis, we identified more than 100 vocal-visual combinations which occurred more frequently than expected by chance. We also probed how multi-modal production varied in the population, finding no differences in the number of visual components produced with vocalisations as a function of age, sex or rank. As expected, chimpanzees produced more visual components alongside vocalizations during longer vocalization bouts, however, this was only the case for some vocalization types, not others. We demonstrate that chimpanzees produce a vast array of combined vocal and visual components, exhibiting a hitherto underappreciated level of multi-modal complexity.SignificanceIn humans and non-humans, acoustic communicative signals are typically accompanied by visual information. Such “multi-modal communication” has been argued to function for increasing redundancy as well as for creating new meaning. However, a currently neglected step when describing multi-modal systems and their functions is to disentangle non-random combinations from those that occur simply by chance. These data are essential to providing a faithful illustration of a species’ multi-modal communicative behaviour. Through recording the behaviour of wild chimpanzees from the Kibale forest, Uganda we aimed to bridge this gap in understanding and generated the first repertoire of non-random combined vocal and visual components in animals. Our data suggest chimpanzees combine many components flexibly and these results have important implications for our understanding of the complexity of multi-modal communication already existing in the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees.
Journal Article
Is anyone listening? : what animals are saying to each other and to us
\"If you could ask a dolphin one question, what would it be? What might a dolphin ask you? In her studies of marine mammal communication, researcher and author Denise Herzing has asked these and related questions for nearly forty years. In this wide-ranging and accessible book, Herzing connects research on dolphin communication to findings from Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Dian Fossey on mountain gorillas, Cynthia Moss on African elephants, and others driving today's exploration of animal language. Considering dolphins and other nonhuman animals as colleagues instead of research subjects, she asks us to meet animals as both speakers and listeners, learning from what others have to tell us, regardless of our agendas. Our ancestors evolved with plants, animals, and the earth itself. We breathe the same oxygen, walk in the same woods, and feel the same wind and water as other life. Understanding animal communication, Herzing reminds us, helps us start to appreciate that we are mutually curious species, carefully considering each other\"-- Provided by publisher.
BOOK
Intentions in interactions: an enactive reply to expressive communication proposals
The search for origins of human linguistic behavior is a consuming project in many fields. Philosophers drawing on studies of animal behavior are working to revise some of the standard cognitive requirements in hopes of linking the origins of human language to non-human animal communication. This work depends on updates to Grice’s theory of communicative intention and Millikan’s teleosemantics. Yet the classic idea of speaker meaning on which these new projects rest presupposes coherent, stable, individual, internal, and prior intention as a cognitive or mental state, which is also the framework presupposed in theory of mind. This framework neglects the co-authored nature of communicative intentions and is thereby at odds with enactivist views of cognition. In this paper we draw on the idea of participatory sense-making alongside research on non-human animal communication to identify
utterances—
co-authored meaningful acts—as the token of communicative activity cross-species. Utterances by our definition are expressive, relational, and work without mindreading. In closing we propose the possibility of dialogical subjectivity, and engage with animal studies to show that some species exhibit its traits.
Journal Article
Michelangelo's finger : an exploration of everyday transcendence /
Proposes that the index finger and the gesture of pointing distinguishes humans from other species, and that the symbolism behind different types of pointing may have played an important part in human evolution and development.
Book
Improving robot-to-human communication using flexible display technology as a robotic-skin-interface: a co-design study
In the evolving field of industrial automation, operator awareness of robot actions and intentions is critical for safety and efficiency, especially when working in close proximity to robots. From the robot-to-human communication angle, a collaborative robot (cobot) is expected to express its internal states and monitor task progress. Various traditional communication modalities (e.g., tower light, external screen, LED ring, and sound) often fall short of conveying nuanced information, while a flexible display curved around the cobot arm using organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology provides a potential advantage. Integrated seamlessly with the robot, this interface enhances interaction by displaying text and video, enriching communication, and positively influencing the human–robot collaboration experience. In this work, we investigate a novel integrated flexible OLED display technology used as a robotic skin-interface to improve robot-to-human communication in a real industrial setting at Volkswagen (VW), following a user-centric Double-Diamond co-design process. We first conducted a co-design workshop with six operator representatives to collect their ideas and expectations on how the robot should communicate with them. The gathered information was used to design an interface for a collaborative human-robot interaction task in motor assembly. The interface was implemented in a workcell and validated qualitatively with a small group of operators (n = 9) and quantitatively with a large group (n = 42). The validation results showed that using flexible OLED technology could improve the operators’ attitude toward the robot, increase their intention to use the robot, enhance perceived enjoyment, social influence, and trust, and reduce their anxiety.
Journal Article
Horses in translation : essential lessons in horse speak : learn to listen and talk in their language
\"Learning to listen and talk to horses in their language, instead of expecting them to comprehend ours, is a milestone in the progressive philosophy of horsemanship, helping find positive solutions to behavior and training problems and ultimately leading to fewer misunderstandings between horses and humans. In her much anticipated follow up, Wilsie uses true stories to relate examples of problems and how they were solved using Horse Speak. Her engaging narrative introduces readers to dozens of real life scenarios from different barns, various disciplines, and riders and handlers with contrasting experiences and backgrounds. Wilsie highlights her Horse Speak process, the clues that point to the best course of action, and the steps she takes to connect with horses that have shut down, grown confused, or become sulky or aggressive for any number of reasons. The result is a book full of incredible insight and exciting possibilities.\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
You talkin’ to me? Functional breed selection may have fundamentally influenced dogs’ sensitivity to human verbal communicative cues
Background
The ability to learn from humans via observation was considered to be equally present across properly socialized dogs. We showed recently that cooperative working breeds learned from a human demonstrator more effectively. We hypothesized that functional breed selection could affect sensitivity to human attention-eliciting behavior. Accordingly, we ran the first ever study on dogs that compared the effect of ostensive and neutral verbal communication in a social learning scenario. We used the detour paradigm around a transparent V-shaped fence with either ostensive (addressing the receiver both with words and specific, attention-eliciting prosody) or neutral speech (monotonous reciting of a short poem) demonstration. The other features (gestures, movement) of the demonstration sequence were kept identical between the two conditions. We tested (
N
= 70) companion dogs from 17 cooperative and 16 independent breeds in three 1-min trials. Subjects had to obtain the reward by detouring around the fence.
Results
Detour latencies of the cooperative dogs improved after both ostensive and neutral speech demonstrations. The independent dogs did not improve their detour latency in either of the conditions. Remarkably, ostensive verbal utterances elicited longer relative looking time towards the demonstrator, cooperative dogs looked longer at the demonstrator, and longer looking time resulted in more successful detours.
Conclusions
Our study provides the first indication that functional breed selection had a significant impact on dogs’ sensitivity to ostensive human communication, which, apart from being crucially important for social learning from humans, until now was considered as a uniformly present heritage of domestication in dogs.
Graphical Abstract
Journal Article
Rhetorical animals
For this edited volume, the editors solicited chapters that investigate the place of nonhuman animals in the purview of rhetorical theory; what it would mean to communicate beyond the human community; how rhetoric reveals our \"brute roots.\" In other words, this book investigates themes that enlighten us about likely or possible implications of the animal turn within rhetorical studies. The present book is unique in its focus on the call for nonanthropocentrism in rhetorical studies. Although there have been many hints in recent years that rhetoric is beginning to consider the implications of the animal turn, as yet no other anthology makes this its explicit starting point and sustained objective. Thus, the various contributions to this book promise to further the ongoing debate about what rhetoric might be after it sheds its long-standing humanistic bias.
eBook