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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Using Personality Traits To Predict Pectoral Fin Contact Initiation Role In Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops Truncatus), Riley Paige Macgregor
Using Personality Traits To Predict Pectoral Fin Contact Initiation Role In Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops Truncatus), Riley Paige Macgregor
Master's Theses
Contact with the pectoral fin facilitates formation and maintenance of social relationships between dolphins (Dudzinski & Ribic, 2017). Additionally, several studies have shown that bottlenose dolphins have distinct personalities that are consistent across time and situation (e.g., Highfill & Kuczaj, 2007; Kuczaj, Highfill, & Byerly, 2012), and it has been suggested that these individual differences (i.e., personality) may influence tactile behavior exchanges. The current study therefore aimed to determine if bottlenose dolphin personality traits predict whether and how dolphins initiate contact as a rubber or rubbee during pectoral fin contact exchanges, and to identify whether the effects of personality traits …
Development Of Semantic Reference For Location Symbols By Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops Truncatus) Using A Two-Way Communication Keyboard, Alyssa Taylor
Master's Theses
The ability for humans to communicate with another species has been an aspiration and well documented. One example is through training animals to make associations between a designated cue and conditioned response (Pryor, 1986). Two-way communication, however, in which both species can express wants/needs has been predominantly pursued with apes and dolphins. Studies conducted by Louis Herman demonstrated the capabilities of dolphins to comprehend complex semantic and syntactic commands in an artificial language system (Herman, Richards, & Wolz, 1984). Researchers working with primates have used American Sign Language, a computer keyboard system with discrete lexigrams, and a portable lexigram keyboard …
The Conundrum Of Causal Reasoning In Elephants, Beri Brown
The Conundrum Of Causal Reasoning In Elephants, Beri Brown
Master's Theses
Causal reasoning is marked by the ability to mentally reconstruct the missing part of a sequence in order to reproduce an outcome. While research on causal reasoning has been done with children, the results of the studies have been inconsistent. A standardized paradigm for comparative causal reasoning studies does not exist. Nissani (2006) investigated causal reasoning in a tool-use task with elephants and concluded that elephants were not capable of causal reasoning. The current study, a modified replication, yielded results that were not congruent with Nissani’s (2006) manuscript. Additionally, it was very unlikely that the Nissani (2006) study truly looked …