Download or read book Communicative Behavior and Evolution written by Martin E. Hahn and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2013-10-22 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Communicative Behavior and Evolution presents the selected works of experts from different scientific disciplines that investigate the evolution of communicative behavior. The book is composed of papers that study communicative behavior of humans and of different kinds of animals. The text contains articles that discuss attempts in the study of behavioral evolution; communication and human language; the behavior-genetic approach; systems approach to genetic and selection mechanisms; investigation of interspecific communication; and learned language in chimpanzees. Zoologists, ethologists, behavioral geneticists, and psychologists will find this book highly interesting.
Download or read book The Evolution of Animal Communication written by William A. Searcy and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gull chicks beg for food from their parents. Peacocks spread their tails to attract potential mates. Meerkats alert family members of the approach of predators. But are these--and other animals--sometimes dishonest? That's what William Searcy and Stephen Nowicki ask in The Evolution of Animal Communication. They take on the fascinating yet perplexing question of the dependability of animal signaling systems. The book probes such phenomena as the begging of nesting birds, alarm calls in squirrels and primates, carotenoid coloration in fish and birds, the calls of frogs and toads, and weapon displays in crustaceans. Do these signals convey accurate information about the signaler, its future behavior, or its environment? Or do they mislead receivers in a way that benefits the signaler? For example, is the begging chick really hungry as its cries indicate or is it lobbying to get more food than its brothers and sisters? Searcy and Nowicki take on these and other questions by developing clear definitions of key issues, by reviewing the most relevant empirical data and game theory models available, and by asking how well theory matches data. They find that animal communication is largely reliable--but that this basic reliability also allows the clever deceiver to flourish. Well researched and clearly written, their book provides new insight into animal communication, behavior, and evolution.
Download or read book The Evolution of Social Communication in Primates written by Marco Pina and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-05-23 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did social communication evolve in primates? In this volume, primatologists, linguists, anthropologists, cognitive scientists and philosophers of science systematically analyze how their specific disciplines demarcate the research questions and methodologies involved in the study of the evolutionary origins of social communication in primates in general and in humans in particular. In the first part of the book, historians and philosophers of science address how the epistemological frameworks associated with primate communication and language evolution studies have changed over time and how these conceptual changes affect our current studies on the subject matter. In the second part, scholars provide cutting-edge insights into the various means through which primates communicate socially in both natural and experimental settings. They examine the behavioral building blocks by which primates communicate and they analyze what the cognitive requirements are for displaying communicative acts. Chapters highlight cross-fostering and language experiments with primates, primate mother-infant communication, the display of emotions and expressions, manual gestures and vocal signals, joint attention, intentionality and theory of mind. The primary focus of the third part is on how these various types of communicative behavior possibly evolved and how they can be understood as evolutionary precursors to human language. Leading scholars analyze how both manual and vocal gestures gave way to mimetic and imitational protolanguage and how the latter possibly transitioned into human language. In the final part, we turn to the hominin lineage, and anthropologists, archeologists and linguists investigate what the necessary neurocognitive, anatomical and behavioral features are in order for human language to evolve and how language differs from other forms of primate communication.
Download or read book The Evolution of Communication written by Marc D. Hauser and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 792 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text addresses the problem of how communication systems, including language, have been designed over the course of evolution. It integrates conceptual issues and empirical results from neurobiology, cognitive and developmental psychology, linguistics, evolutionary biology, and ethology.
Download or read book Evolution of Communicative Flexibility written by D. Kimbrough Oller and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Experts investigate communicative flexibility (in both form and usage of signals) as the foundation of the evolution of complex communication systems, including human language. The evolutionary roots of human communication are difficult to trace, but recent comparative research suggests that the first key step in that evolutionary history may have been the establishment of basic communicative flexibility--the ability to vocalize freely combined with the capability to coordinate vocalization with communicative intent. The contributors to this volume investigate how some species (particularly ancient hominids) broke free of the constraints of "fixed signals," actions that were evolved to communicate but lack the flexibility of language--a newborn infant's cry, for example, always signals distress and has a stereotypical form not modifiable by the crying baby. Fundamentally, the contributors ask what communicative flexibility is and what evolutionary conditions can produce it. The accounts offered in these chapters are notable for taking the question of language origins farther back in evolutionary time than in much previous work. Many contributors address the very earliest communicative break of the hominid line from the primate background; others examine the evolutionary origins of flexibility in, for example, birds and marine mammals. The volume's interdisciplinary theoretical perspectives illuminate issues that are on the cutting edge of recent research on this topic. Contributors Stéphanie Barbu, Curt Burgess, Josep Call, Laurance Doyle, Julia Fischer, Michael Goldstein, Ulrike Griebel, Kurt Hammerschmidt, Sean Hanser, Martine Hausberger, Laurence Henry, Allison Kaufman, Stan Kuczaj, Robert F. Lachlan, Brian MacWhinney, Radhika Makecha, Brenda McCowan, D. Kimbrough Oller, Michael Owren, Ron Schusterman, Charles T. Snowdon, Kim Sterelny, Benoît Testé, Gert Westermann
Download or read book The Behavior of Communicating written by William John. Smith and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 559 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, W. John Smith enlarges ethology's perspective on communication and takes it in new directions. Traditionally, ethological analysis has focused on the motivational states of displaying animals: What makes the bird sing, the cat lash its tail, the bee dance? The Behavior of Communicating emphasizes messages. It seeks to answer questions about the information shared by animals through their displays: What information is made available to a bird by its neighbor's song, to a cat by its opponent's gesture, to a bee by its hivemate's dancing? What information is extracted from sources contextual to these displays? How are the responses to displays adaptive for recipients and senders? What evolutionary processes and constraints underlie observed patterns of animal communication? Smith's approach is deeply rooted in the ethological tradition of naturalistic observations. Detailed analysis of observed displays and display repertoires illuminates the theoretical discussion that forms the core of the book. A taxonomy and interpretative analysis of messages made available through formalized display behavior are also developed. Smith shows that virtually all subhuman animal displays may be interpreted as transmitting messages about the communicator--not the environment--and, more specifically, that messages indicate the kinds of behavior the displaying animal may choose to perform. The most widespread behavioral messages are surprisingly general, even banal, in character; yet they make public information that is not readily available from other sources and that would otherwise be essentially private to the communicator. Taken along with information from sources contextual to the displays, the messages made available may permit responses that are markedly specific. By taking advantage of contextual specificity, a species expands the capacity of its display behavior to be functional in numerous and diverse circumstances. After developing the concept of messages and discussing their forms, the responses made to them, and the functions engendered, Smith turns to the evolution of display behavior--the ways in which acts become specialized for communication and the nature of the evolutionary constraints affecting the ultimate forms of displays. He revises the traditional ethological concept of displays, and in a final chapter develops the further concept of formalized interactions. Here he extends the discussion to formal patterns of behavior that, unlike displays, are beyond the capabilities of individual performers. Human nonverbal communication, which is considered from time to time throughout the book, provides the richest examples of communication flexibly structured at this level of complexity.
Download or read book Pheromone Communication in Moths written by Jeremy D. Allison and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2016-10-25 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Common among moths is a mate-finding system in which females emit a pheromone that induces males to fly upwind along the pheromone plume. Since the chemical pheromone of the domesticated silk moth was identified in 1959, a steady increase in the number of moth species whose pheromone attractants have been identified now results in a rich base for review and synthesis. Pheromone Communication in Moths summarizes moth pheromone biology, covering the chemical structures used by the various lineages, signal production and perception, the genetic control of moth pheromone traits, interactions of pheromones with host-plant volatiles, pheromone dispersal and orientation, male pheromones and courtship, and the evolutionary forces that have likely shaped pheromone signals and their role in sexual selection. Also included are chapters on practical applications in the control and monitoring of pest species as well as case studies that address pheromone systems in a number of species and groups of closely allied species. Pheromone Communication in Moths is an invaluable resource for entomologists, chemical ecologists, pest-management scientists, and professionals who study pheromone communication and pest management.
Download or read book An Investigation Into the Evolution of Communicative Behaviors written by Ezequiel A. Di Paolo and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 54 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abstract: "Communication is a phenomenon with many different aspects, and it has attracted the attention of a variety of scientific disciplines, Biology being perhaps the one with the best chance of providing a good theoretical backbone by addressing the unifying theme that underlies the different views on the subject. However, recent work in the evolution of communication have tended to evade rather than embrace this task. I provide a critical analysis of the reasons for this situation, which are, for the most part, methodological and conceptual, and manifest themselves in the way biologists characterize the phenomenon, as well as in the tools they use to research it. I present an alternative characterization in terms of autopoietic theory, and show that not only is it possible to work with it, but that it also addresses issues of interest to other disciplines. By choosing as my object of study a game of interactions, I intend to provide some continuity with traditional approaches and the view of communication presented here. Traditional tools, such as game theory, are not blindly discarded, but are extended in order to go beyond equilibrium studies into the nature of the evolutionary dynamics. Further extension involves the use of a computational model, so some of the methodological issues that arise by its use are discussed. Within this model, communication evolves in a society of artificial agents even in the presence of costs against it, and this is explained in terms of selective mechanisms acting within the constraints provided by other factors such as spatial organization. A complex network of mechanisms is explored by studying the phenomenology of emergent self-regulating unities in the spatial distribution of agents. Dialogic communication also evolves non-trivially in a similar game in which agents share all the relevant environmental information and, by coordinating their actions, they are able to perform tasks beyond their individual cognitive capabilities, showing that the concept of information has to be used with care, and providing a metaphor for the evolution of cognition as rooted in social activity. Conclusions are drawn both on the general subject of explaining complex processes with many interacting causal factors, and on the relation of these results to the evolution of natural communication."
Download or read book Evolution and Contextual Behavioral Science written by David Sloan Wilson and published by New Harbinger Publications. This book was released on 2018-09-01 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do evolutionary science and contextual behavioral science have in common? Edited by David Sloan Wilson and Steven C. Hayes, this groundbreaking book offers a glimpse into the histories of these two schools of thought, and provides a sound rationale for their reintegration. Evolutionary science (ES) provides a unifying theoretical framework for the biological sciences, and is increasingly being applied to the human-related sciences. Meanwhile, contextual behavioral science (CBS) seeks to understand the history and function of human behavior in the context of everyday life where behaviors occur, and to influence behavior in a practical sense. This volume seeks to integrate these two bodies of knowledge that have developed largely independently. In Evolution and Contextual Behavioral Science, two renowned experts in their fields argue why ES and CBS are intrinsically linked, as well as why their reintegration—or, reunification—is essential. The main purpose of this book is to continue to move CBS under the umbrella of ES, and to help evolutionary scientists understand how working alongside contextual behavioral scientists can foster both the development of ES principles and their application to practical situations. Rather than the sequential relationship that is typically imagined between these two schools of thought, this volume envisions a parallel relationship between ES and CBS, where science can best influence positive change in the real world.
Download or read book Social Behavior and Communication written by P. Marler and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-09 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Other books in this series focus on behavior at the individual level, approached from the viewpoints of biochemistry, anatomy, physiology, and psychology. In this volume we show how the functioning nervous systems of interacting individuals are coordinated, with the ultimate creation of complex social structures. The intri cacies of an individual's nervous system have been subject to intense inquiry, and research at the chemical, cellular, and organ levels has made remarkable progress. Work at the social level has been conducted somewhat independently, by way of behavioral phenomena and communicative interactions. With the emergence of a large body of information from neurobiology, the beginnings of an integrated approach are possible. New data on social functions are presented in the chapters to follow, and the forward-looking reader may wish to reflect on how they clarify understanding of interactions between two or more independent nervous systems. The outcome is harmonious social structure and improvement in the inclusive fitness of group-living individuals. We believe that there is in prospect a new way of looking at social function that will ultimately increase our understanding of the highest and most complex levels of neurobiology. The modern approach to the study of social behavior involves more than the recording of interactions between animals. Each individual brings to the process of social interaction the implications of its prior genetic and experiential history.
Download or read book Neurobiology of Social Communication In Primates written by Horest Steklis and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2012-12-02 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Neurobiology of Social Communication in Primates: An Evolutionary Perspective presents evidence on the neural basis of communicative behavior in primates, reevaluating the relationship between human language and animal communication in view of the linguistic abilities of chimpanzees. This book consists of 10 chapters. Chapter 1 discusses some of the persistent problems in evolutionary neurobiology of primate communication. The effects of brain lesions and stimulation on vocalization in New and Old World monkeys, relation between species differences in peripheral vocal structures and species contrasts in vocal performance, and anatomy and physiology of the nonhuman primate auditory system are reviewed in Chapters 2 to 4. Chapters 5 to 7 examine the effects of electrical brain stimulation on human verbal communication and facial expression, clinical data pertaining to language pathologies, and neural mechanisms of manual and oral control. The last three chapters summarize the materials presented in earlier chapters. This publication is recommended for neuroscientists, behavioral biologists, neurologists, psychiatrists, and students interested in the evolutionary heritage of human speech and language.
Download or read book Steps to an Ecology of Mind written by Gregory Bateson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 572 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gregory Bateson was a philosopher, anthropologist, photographer, naturalist, and poet, as well as the husband and collaborator of Margaret Mead. This classic anthology of his major work includes a new Foreword by his daughter, Mary Katherine Bateson. 5 line drawings.
Download or read book Language and Human Behavior written by Derek Bickerton and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2016-06-01 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “What this book proposes to do,” writes Derek Bickerton, “is to stand the conventional wisdom of the behavioral sciences on its head: instead of the human species growing clever enough to invent language, it will view that species as blundering into language and, as a direct result of that, becoming clever.” According to Bickerton, the behavioral sciences have failed to give an adequate account of human nature at least partly because of the conjunction and mutual reinforcement of two widespread beliefs: that language is simply a means of communication and that human intelligence is the result of the rapid growth and unusual size of human brains. Bickerton argues that each of the properties distinguishing human intelligence and consciousness from that of other animals can be shown to derive straightforwardly from properties of language. In essence, language arose as a representational system, not a means of communication or a skill, and not a product of culture but an evolutionary adaptation. The author stresses the necessity of viewing intelligence in evolutionary terms, seeing it not as problem solving but as a way of maintaining homeostasis—the preservation of those conditions most favorable to an organism, the optimal achievable conditions for survival and well-being. Nonhumans practice what he calls “on-line thinking” to maintain homeostasis, but only humans can employ off-line thinking: “only humans can assemble fragments of information to form a pattern that they can later act upon without having to wait on that great but unpunctual teacher, experience.” The term protolanguage is used to describe the stringing together of symbols that prehuman hominids employed. “It did not allow them to turn today’s imagination into tomorrow’s fact. But it is just this power to transform imagination into fact that distinguishes human behavior from that of our ancestral species, and indeed from that of all other species. It is exactly what enables us to change our behavior, or invent vast ranges of new behavior, practically overnight, with no concomitant genetic changes.” Language and Human Behavior should be of interest to anyone in the behavioral and evolutionary sciences and to all those concerned with the role of language in human behavior.
Download or read book Mechanisms of Communication and Recognition in Social Evolution written by Christina Riehl and published by Frontiers Media SA. This book was released on 2021-02-22 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Evolutionary Communication written by James Lull and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-11-28 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Evolutionary Communication presents the first comprehensive evolutionary approach to the study of human communication. Presuming no specialized knowledge of evolutionary theory, this reader-friendly textbook explains why and how communication became the determining factor in human development. Drawing from the latest scientific research, Evolutionary Communication represents a truly groundbreaking contribution to Communication Studies as a field of study. Opening up an inspiring new approach for teaching communication, the book can be used as a core volume or supplemental text for courses ranging from Introduction to Communication and Communication Theory to special topics and graduate seminars.
Download or read book Uniquely Human written by Philip Lieberman and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a stimulating synthesis of cognitive science, anthropology, and linguistics, Philip Lieberman tackles the fundamental questions of human nature: How and why are human beings so different from other species? Can the Darwinian theory of evolution explain human linguistic and cognitive ability? How do our processes of language and thought differ from those of Homo erectus 500,000 years ago, or of the Neanderthals 35,000 years ago? What accounts for human moral sense? Lieberman believes that evolution for rapid, efficient vocal communication forged modern human beings by creating the modern human brain. Earlier hominids lacked fully human speech and syntax, which together allow us to convey complex thoughts rapidly. The author discusses how natural selection acted on older brain mechanisms to produce a structure that can regulate the motor activity necessary for speech and command the complex syntax that enhances the creativity of human language. The unique brain mechanisms underlying human language also enhance human cognitive ability, allowing us to derive abstract concepts and to plan complex activities. These factors are necessary for the development of true altruism and moral behavior. Lieberman supports his argument about the evolution of speech and the human brain by combining the comparative method of Charles Darwin, insights from archaeology and child development, and the results of high-tech research with computerized brain scanning and computer models that can recreate speech sounds made by our ancestors over 100,000 years ago. Uniquely Human will stimulate fresh thought and controversy on the basic question of how we came to be.
Download or read book Animal Communication Theory written by Ulrich E. Stegmann and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-05-02 with total page 471 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The explanation of animal communication by means of concepts like information, meaning and reference is one of the central foundational issues in animal behaviour studies. This book explores these issues, revolving around questions such as: what is the nature of information? What theoretical roles does information play in animal communication studies? Is it justified to employ these concepts in order to explain animal communication? What is the relation between animal signals and human language? The book approaches the topic from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including ethology, animal cognition, theoretical biology and evolutionary biology, as well as philosophy of biology and mind. A comprehensive introduction familiarises non-specialists with the field and leads on to chapters ranging from philosophical and theoretical analyses to case studies involving primates, birds and insects. The resulting survey of new and established concepts and methodologies will guide future empirical and theoretical research.
