Dear colleagues:
We are pleased to inform you of the publication of the following
article on dolphin social cognition by The Dolphin Institute. If you
would like a pdf copy, please email [EMAIL PROTECTED] We hope you are
having a great spring. We are currently conducting our annual
surveys of North Pacific humpback whales in Maui waters.
Pack, A. A., & Herman, L. M. (2006). Dolphin social cognition and
joint attention: Our current understanding. Aquatic Mammals, 32,
443-460.
Recent intense interest in social cognition in dolphins reflects
findings that wild dolphins live in complex societies that rely on
individual recognition, a protracted period of development, coalition
formation, and cooperative, as well as competitive, social behaviors.
Laboratory studies have revealed a host of cognitive skills that can
support such complex behaviors- for example, broad imitative
abilities, abilities to understand another's indicative cues, and
spontaneous use of pointing to communicate with human companions.
Joint attention is recognized as a key element of social cognition
that extends from simply following another's gaze to using pointing
or gazing cues of another to select objects or locations. Studies of
bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) have revealed that they
understand (1) human-given direct and cross-body points; (2)
human-given dynamic and static pointing and gazing cues within
object-choice tasks; (2) the geometry of pointing cues; (4) the
referential character of pointing and gazing cues; (5) sequences of
direct and/or cross-body points that were instructions to transport
one object to another; (6) how to produce pointing cues and the
importance of audience attention; and (7) possibly the belief state
of another that is engaged in a joint attention task. The evidence
suggests that joint attention skills in dolphins are robust and to
some degree symmetric cross comprehension and production.
Comparative analyses indicate that in some areas of joint attention,
abilities of dolphins exceed the demonstrated skills of apes.
Possibly, a dolphin's capacity for joint attention may be related to
the adaptive benefits of being able to attend tot the focus of
another dolphin's echolocation beam in conjunction with a
sophisticated social structure dependent on attention to others.
Aloha,
Adam A. Pack, Ph.D.
The Dolphin Institute
P.O. Box 700694
Kapolei, HI 96709
808-679-3690
www.dolphin-institute.org
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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