posted
I must admit absolute and complete ignorance as to the arguments refuting it. And thus far no one has been willing to mention anything specific.
I was also taught in my audiology classes that there are specific areas in the brain corresponding to certain frequencies of sound. I was taught that if for some reason the brain did not receive the input of certain frequencies with in a similar "window" of time, the function of those nerves would be given over to other things, and that person would have lost the opportunity to be able to perceive those vibrations later. Supposedly this is one of the reasons why early intervention is so important.
If the inner ear is damaged or deformed beyond our ability to help, the child can be given a cochlear implant which will artificially stimulate the nerves in question at the proper frequencies, thus allowing the brain to develop the ability to perceive them.
I don't know how much of the "science" I was taught in these college classes is proven and how much is extrapolation and theory. But these things were taught to me as fact.
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Soara, I think Noemon and Bev answered your question about running quite sufficiently, so I won't add to their replies.
As far as zoos go we shall have to agree to disagree. As far as choosing between the Ritz and the wild, I'd go with the wild everytime. If I had huge groups of people standing in front of my room, peering in at me, and small children screaming and yelling at me, I'd do the same thing the lion did to the huge crowd in front of his cage the last time we visited the zoo - piss on them.
space opera
edit: verb tense
[ January 06, 2005, 05:24 PM: Message edited by: Space Opera ]
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posted
Cats have one gesture that they use just like a word: shaking a front paw means "ew, gross!". The shaking would fling off an offending substance if the cat happened to step in something revolting, but this gesture is also used frequently to communicate distaste even when their front paws have not been anywhere near the stuff that's gross.
Example, Brando wants to sniff what is in my glass, in case it's chocolate milk or something that he likes. This time it turns out to be orange juice. Only his nose got anywhere even close to the juice, but then one front paw shakes rapidly, denoting, "ew, how can you DRINK that stuff?" Citrus flavors are apparently too acidic for cats to appreciate.
I've seen many cats make this same gesture in a variety of situations, always indicating distaste. To me it's just as though they said the words.
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posted
People in one thread are amazed ASL is a real language, but in another insist that their cats talk to them. Maybe not the same people, but
There is no open and shut evidence that language or any other behavior has a critical window. But the fact that children form creoles and adults do not points to it. Also, the imprinting of an accent which generally happens by 6 or 7 is another evidence.
Adults are actually more efficient at learning language than children- they just don't learn some of the little details. I don't know if anyone has tried an experiment where a foreign language is learned by an adult from watching tapes of a mother playing with her baby. Who knows if this could result in overcoming the accent thing. Of course, it would take 3 or 4 years. But if you spent months and months just mastering a consonant, who knows?
Then there are the "wild child" cases, one that occured in Napoleonic France and one that occured in Southern California in the 60's. (Genie). For me, it has always seemed that there were probably reasons these children were isolated in the first place. In the French wild child case, did he run away from his parents or otherwise fail to seek out humans? In the Genie case, her father thought she was retarded and so locked her up. Not speaking was not among her greatest challenges. Also, the team that studied her was both heavily agendized and the team leader failed to keep accurate records. There is a Nova episode. Oh, and I found an interesting site: Feralchildren.com They lean heavily toward the critical period hypothesis.
The idea is not that children are better at learning language than adults (Secret order of Linguists Tenet 666) but that if a child hasn't learned a human language during childhood, they will lack the tools to pick it up later.
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quote: Cats have one gesture that they use just like a word: shaking a front paw means "ew, gross!".
You are *so* right about the shaking the paw thing. I have seen it numerous times. That cracks me up! Though I seriously doubt this is a "word" that is passed down from parent cat to child cat. Rather, I think it is part of the instinctual "script" that is carried in their genes.
Similarly, guinea pigs have a "set" way of washing themselves. The go through the exact same motions in the exact same order every time. And if they get interrupted, they will continue from exactly where they left off. It is like running a computer program. And they *all* do it exactly the same way. This is not a tradition passed from parent to child. There are not "cultural differences" in the way California guinea pigs wash themselves. It is genetic instructions written into every cell of their body, inherited from birth.
Trisha, you are absolutely correct that children do not learn "faster" than adults. Adults, having already learned one language, use that mapping and awareness and the intelligent effort they make to learn other languages. I picked up Tagalog on my mission faster than a child would. And as I learned it, I learned to understand my own language better. I used my knowledge and experience with English to build upon. While eventually I no longer needed to translate in my head, in the beginning it was a necessity. But while at first that was a handicap, my mind was perhaps filing away the new vocabulary words mapping out a similar pattern that already existed from my first language.
I agree that all the available evidence points to a "learning window". Not that they learn better than adults, but that mapping out is happening for the very first time. If it doesn't happen then, some of the ability for it to ever happen is lost. I believe that some ability for sentience is lost with it.
As an interesting side note, in Tarzan, he learned English and was fairly successful at integrating into society. But IIRC, he was raised by a group of unusual apes that possessed language. Am I remembering correctly?
*remebers that she needs to read Tarzan*
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I agree with you on the learning window business--I was just pointing out that its existence isn't universally agreed upon.
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Yeah, but I am getting pretty rusty these days. Not enough opportunities to study and practice.
I would be very interested in hearing some of the arguments against the "learning window". I want to know if there is any merit to them, or if they are a misunderstanding of what is meant by the theory.
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posted
Humans have a genetic capacity for language, too, of course. I'm not sure that because it's NOT cultural, that means it doesn't count as language. It's still an abstract representation of a concept.
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posted
We have the genetic capacity for it, but if we are raised in the isolation of language we will not spontaneously generate language.
A cat raised without ever seeing another cat will probably still do the "paw shake". I could be wrong though. And guinea pigs for sure would wash in exactly the same manner even if they never saw another of their species.
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posted
Your definition of what you will call language seems so narrow and anthropocentric. You seem to me to be be searching for reasons to rule out anything animals do as being language. It's almost as if your very definition of language has built into it the idea that it's something humans do that animals can't do.
If it's a detailed representation, if it's abstract, if it maps easily onto a word or sentence that humans might use, in what way is it inferior to human language? I just don't get that.
I guess I see the samenesses far more than the differences. 65 million years really is close, on a galactic scale. Alien life forms, that have evolved from photosynthetic bacteria (assuming panspermia) on a different planet in our galaxy are likely to be very, VERY alien to us. Yet still related (they should have a similar genetic code, as do prokarotes and eukarotes). I guess the overall size of my scale of proximity is just astronomically larger than most people's?
posted
The very large cat family has many 'proofs' of communication:
Alpha Male
Challenging Alpha Male
Hunting
Bev: Animals that are domesticated have no reason to further develop skills they need for thier packs. Furthermore, why would they communicate if they don't need to communicate to survive? Are humans really sentient? Think of the population at large, what do they do? The things they 'want' to do: sex, eat, sleep. No one has to be a poet, or an artist, (maybe there is a poet, or an artist cat) yet most humans don't have to be creative to procreate, eat, sleep, and stay warm.
Maybe because at one time it was a social rule or exception that if you were an artist, you were above a gatherer (in the eyes of a female).
Mere observation will never allow us to actually know what is going on in another person's brain, why is it any different for an animal's brain?
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posted
I came back to this thread because I was thinking about something as a result of it that I wanted to put into a post.
I had no idea that there were posts to respond to.
quote: Your definition of what you will call language seems so narrow and anthropocentric. You seem to me to be be searching for reasons to rule out anything animals do as being language. It's almost as if your very definition of language has built into it the idea that it's something humans do that animals can't do.
Think that if you want, but I have already said that I think it is possible that some animals may have language--only that we haven't discovered it yet. I think some apes have a capacity to learn language, but I don't think that they use language in the wild (for reasons I explained above.) Do I think cats and dogs have language? Absolutely not.
Here is the thing I was thinking of just now: I think that the human communication of "smiling" is simliar to the cat shaking its paw in disgust. In other words, I don't think "smiling" is a learned, cultural response. I think that it is something inborn and instinctual. I don't know if this is true or not, I am just pondering aloud here.
You see, in watching my three children progress from their newborn state, I didn't see any evidence that I "taught" them what a smile meant. It was more like a switch was turned on around 6 months and they were able to understand what it meant. They were not immitating me. They were spontaneously using smiles to show pleaure. Their learning of words was far more "trial and error". They would immitate sound having no clue of meaning. Over time a vague idea of meaning would emerge, but it took a lot of trial and error to get to that point. It was so obvious that they had to learn language, and that it was a long process.
Same with crying. No one "teaches" a child to cry. It is universal.
If a human raises a chimp, will it ever "learn" to smile in the way humans do? I am thinking no. Their "grin" means something entirely different, and I don't think being raised by humans changes that in the slightest.
Therefore, the human acts of smiling and crying are not parts of human language, but certainly are part of human communication. They are not cultural acts (though human culture may effect them), they are inborn parts of our genetic makeup, or "spirit" if you will. As is the human instinct to be drawn towards faces.
quote: Furthermore, why would they communicate if they don't need to communicate to survive?
Now, I really hate to keep repeating myself, but language and communication are not the same thing. At all. I feel that some people think I am saying that animals don't communicate with each other. When have I ever said that? In fact I have said the contrary multiple times in this thread.
I have studied what language *is* and I think I have a pretty good understanding of what it is *not*. And I am quite confident that most animals don't have it.
Raventh, I do think that humans, through language, communicate far more intricate meaning than most animals--domesticated or wild--can ever hope to. It is a difference between the abstract and the concrete. We ponder our existance, the meaning of life. Language is required for that. We are far more than our basic needs. That is part of what being sentient *is*. Are there other sentient races on this planet? I have no idea.
posted
Interesting article on What Jane Goodall taught us about chimps in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution re: a natural history museum exhibit for kids. I was trying to find a reference for chimpanzees learning to communicate with "human" gestures -- which I remember very foggily -- but this came up first. Fascinating.
quote:Read my lips
Lectures on ape habitat conservation and ape language skills will be at 7 p.m. March 16 and March 30 at Fernbank.
Lisa Parr will close out the lecture series April 13 with a discussion of chimp facial expression and emotions, under the theory that humans and chimps inherited some of the same faces and feelings from a common ancestor.
When a chimpanzee smiles or pouts, it often means the same thing as when a person makes those faces, said Parr, a research scientist at Yerkes Primate Center in Atlanta.
A chimp's toothy grin has a lot in common with the human smile, Parr said.
"In general, the expression as a whole is a friendly type expression," Parr said.
But sometimes when chimps grin, it is because they are afraid, she said. Parr said the expression originated as a display of submission, upon meeting a stranger, to avoid a fight. Over time, the expression may have evolved into a simple greeting, though it still shows up in moments of fear.
"We smile when we're nervous sometimes," Parr said. "It doesn't mean we are happy all the time."
Chimps also have a play face they use when goofing around. It's a silly face made by opening the mouth while hiding the top teeth under the upper lip. "It's accompanied by a very distinct vocalization," Parr said. "We call it laughter."
Chimps laugh for some of the same reasons that people laugh, she said.
"When you tickle them, they laugh," Parr said.
Another facial expression chimps commonly use is the pout. They push out their lower lip and make a sad face. Parr said when a chimp pouts, it means the same thing as when a toddler pouts: I want something, and I can't have it.
"They use that one when they're sad," Parr said.
No scowly faces
Like children, chimps also use the pouty face because it works. When a chimp pouts, Parr said, "another member of the group will go over and put an arm around them." ... For example, chimps have no mean face. The shape of their brow makes it impossible for them to scowl.
So when chimps gets mad, it doesn't show in their faces. Instead, their hair stands on end, they stand up on two legs, and then they charge at the offending party or some other target in a display of aggression.
Incidentally, there is generally thought to be both a "reflexive smile" and a "social smile" in infants. The former is attributed to reflex, whereas the latter is a learned behavior. Feral children do not show a social smile.
[ January 08, 2005, 04:01 PM: Message edited by: Sara Sasse ]
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posted
Interesting. I was under the impression that whenever a chimp "smiled" or showed teeth, it was the fear-expression, or even agression.
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posted
I agree with beverly that language is not necessary for communication.
Think of the game charades. The entire point of the game is to communicate without language. Charades even has a limited vocabulary: there are words ore signs that mean book, movie, etc..
And yet, there is no language in the game charades. If there were, it wouldn't be much of a game -- it would be a contest to see who could understand this language the best.
Sometimes Mary and I play a game where I try to communicate without language (a character with intelligence 3 knows no language, but may communicate through grunts and guestures). I am pretty good at it, and am able to communicate quite a lot through grunts and guestures. But I am not able to communicate anything abstract, which is what beverly has been talking about.
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posted
Maybe it is so for the great apes, or for baboons? Or perhaps the journalist got the quotes wrong.
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I don't know much about the behavior of various apes. I actually would really like to know more. I have been fascinated with primates ever since I can remember. Fascinated because of how similar they are to us. Maybe I should pick up some books on the subject. Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
Just a quick parusal on the internet about chimpanzee facial expressions, it seems to me that the above article may be a bit of a stretch.
Not that I think we don't have a common ancestor, I think we may and that our facial expressions may bear *some* similarity because of it.
But at the same time, the meaning of the expressions seems substantially different also.
Humans spontaneously smile out of pleasure or delight. Just think of any child you have ever met. This is far more than *just* communication. It is a reflex as much as crying is. That it *does* communicate is secondary. There doesn't seem to be an ape facial expression that is quite like that.
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posted
I remember being utterly astounded here in Madison when I first visited the primates at the zoo. I think that before this time, I'd only been to zoos as a young child, and I wasn't really paying attention. This time, I made eye contact with one of the chimps, and it was amazing.
There's always the risk of inappropriately anthropomorphizing, though. Easy to read into interactions more than is there. But wow -- what a memorable moment.
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quote:Humans spontaneously smile out of pleasure or delight. Just think of any child you have ever met. This is far more than *just* communication. It is a reflex as much as crying is. That it *does* communicate is secondary. There doesn't seem to be an ape facial expression that is quite like that.
Incidentally, there is generally thought to be both a "reflexive smile" and a "social smile" in infant development. The former is attributed to reflex, whereas the latter is a learned behavior. Feral children do not show a social smile.
quote:Just a quick parusal on the internet about chimpanzee facial expressions, it seems to me that the above article may be a bit of a stretch.
Any links in particular look especially helpful?
[ January 08, 2005, 04:20 PM: Message edited by: Sara Sasse ]
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posted
Interesting about ferral children. I was thinking it was probably true that children raised with a lack of smiles would eventually stop smiling as they got older. I didn't know about ferral children though.
The link I was looking at was a PDF file. It contained a series of pictures of chimpanzee facial expressions and then a table that contained their meanings. I hate bothering with PDF files if I can help it. I can't do a cashed search, and they take so long to load up. I will see if I can find a better one.
An odd thought: if our smile looks to them most like their "fear face" displaying submissiveness, what must they think of us silly humans always acting so obsequious?
Edit: here is the PDF file I was looking at first, and another link, though not as specific or helpful.
posted
I have no idea. I remember during one of my childhood trips to a zoo that the group I was with was laughing at the bright red bottom of a baboon. (Kids are coarse and cruel sometimes. ) He charged the barrier, and the guide told us it was because we bared our teeth. But that was a baboon, and he was a (AFAIK) just a zoo guide.
Lisa Parr, the woman quoted above, is a research scientist at the Yerkes primate Center, the oldest and largest primate research center in the US. I'd tend to assume she knows her stuff, although she could have been misquoted.
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posted
When I say I think it is a bit of a stretch, I mean to say that the above article includes her opinion that the facial expressions are quite similar. And while I agree that there are some similarities, I personally don't fine them to be all that remarkable.
It would be like me saying that the expression in cats and horses of throwing their ears back to show disapproval or agression is similar to one of our expressions--maybe the lowering of eyebrows? I could conceivably draw such a similarity, but most people would think I was stretching a bit to make it.
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posted
bev, I'm having trouble opening your first link. It seems to be a link to a paper by Fernandez-Carriba, and I've found one online in PDF format, but I'm not sure it is relevant. It is about lateralization of hand gestures, not about a social smile. Does the content here look familiar?
If not, then perhaps if you tell me the steps you took to find the link, I could translate it into html.
[going to go work for a bit, will be back later. I've been struck with the need for winter cleaning. ]
[ January 08, 2005, 04:48 PM: Message edited by: Sara Sasse ]
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posted
The subject of the article has nothing to do with what we are talking about, but if you page down a bit, it contains information pertinent to the discussion.
Edit: Hmmm, that link you provided is an entirely different article. Sorry my link isn't working. I will see if I can change it.
posted
Okay, after posting a bit more, and watching some guy relieve himself on my lawn, I finally grabbed my copy of The Compass Rose and read "Mazes". I always find that story so painfully beautiful, and it definitely does pertain to the discussion we're having. Sara, bev, have either of you read it? I tried to find a copy of it online for you, but wasn't able to do so.
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I wonder, was the narrator supposed to be a rat? I assume not, since it has such troubles with the atmosphere, and the comment about the wearing of clothing being like an "old widower who has taken the Vow of Silence." I assume the narrator is a being not native to this planet. Though it was pretty clear that the "alien" was for all intents and purposes a human.
If a human were observing an alien animal, you'd think they would be very, very careful in their observation--taking into account the different needs (like food) and looking for any unusual behavior.
Just as the narrator was able to eventually tell that there was no "language" in the human's body movement, but that the communication was from the mouth (the narrator appears to be completely deaf, since there is *no* mention of sound) you would think that a human observing an alien animal would be observant enough to notice similar complexities of movement. The only reason they would not is if they assumed they were dealing with a regular earthling rat and had already drawn conclusions so as not to look for it. Though, even then I would like to think that an observant, intelligent human would notice something unusual there, since movement is something that we can easily perceive. This is not the case of communication through ESP where humans would be hopeless to sense what was going on.
So, my guess is that this story is about a deaf, sentient alien that looks just like a rat, but it's physiology is different enough that it cannot eat the food given it.
That's a bit hard to swallow. Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
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Bev, thanks for directing me to your post about "Mazes".
I think that we got very different things from the story--it's a short story that I find both breathtaking and heart wrenching, and one that I don't have any real trouble "swallowing". I found this story to have quite a bit of insight into the difficulties that one species has in determining another's ability to communicate, since differrent species would likely have different base assumptions about the nature of "speech".
What we can gather about the protagonist's species from this story: They're quite small compared to humans. They have four legs They are capable of bipedal locomotion They do not possess auditory sense organs They are likely tunnel dwellers They have eyes similar to our own The opening of their mouths is vertical They probably form pair-bonds They communicate through bodily movement, especially that of the limbs.
I didn't find myself thinking that the aliens looked exactly like rats. I pictured them as being vaguely rodent-like, but I don't see anything in the story that made me think that the scientist thought that they actually were terran rats or mice. I imagined the scientist being part of a survey team checking out a new world, and simply examining an interesting seeming species to see how bright they are. One of the primary reasons why the scientist wouldn't assume that the protagonist's movements were a form of speech is that he wouldn't have been looking for it--he was doing basic tests to see if the protagonist was as smart as a rat, not to see if it could comprehend language. The protagonist, on the other hand, had no doubt of the human's intelligence, seeing evidence of it in all of the manufactured things in the lab. He is straining to communicate, and closely observing the human to try to see how it communicates. Even with that close observation, when he stumbles onto the correct idea--labial communication--he rejects it, because he does not possess the ability to perceive sound, and so doesn't have all the pieces to the puzzle.
posted
I didn't pick up on all of the conclusions that you listed there. But the problem lies with my reading comprehension.
Cool insight into the story, Noemon. I can see how in this circumstance the alien animal could appear to be very stupid to the human, an illusion caused by the creature's complexity and intelligence.
Certainly an organism can communicate through means that we aren't capable of sensing. I understand that much of elephant communication is outside our hearing range. But of course, we can pick up on all of it with instruments. That might not be the case with ESP or physical movements to fast or subtle for us to see.
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posted
Of course, you have to keep in mind that I transcribed the story--when you do that your attention to its smaller details increases quite a bit, I find.
I was actually surprised at just how much more I got out of the story as a result of transcribing it. I'm thinking about doing that with a few of my other favorites, just to see what further insights I glean from them. It was also really interesting to pick up on some of LeGuin's stylistic choices that I hadn't been aware of previously. Her use of semicolons, for example, is incredibly heavy in that story, and she often uses them to link an independent clause with a subordinate clause, rather than using them to link two independent clauses.
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But that was a baboon, and he was a (AFAIK) just a zoo guide.
