Concept: Dolphin cognition, communication. And: Fission-fusion society; joint attention, false belief task.
- A fission-fusion society is one in which the composition of groups changes according to time, environment, and activity, e.g. fusing to sleep, and fission to forage (via Wikipedia).
- Joint attention is the shared focus of two individuals on an object. It has been argued to be fundamental for the formation of human culture.
- The ability to attribute false belief (which can be tested by a task) is an important milestone in human development; that another ego may have beliefs that diverge from one’s own.
Source: A Review in Trends in Cognitive Science (April 2013).
- Choice of model: Bottlenose dolphins are different from humans since they: lack any specialized limb for manipulating the environment (esp. thumb); live in a 3D environment with few landmarks; limited usefulness for the modalities of chemosensation or vision, and primarily depend on the acoustic modality. They are similar to humans since they: live in a fission-fusion society; males form long-lasting alliances; females form long-lasting alliances with offspring; social learning allows the formation of distinct foraging traditions. Dolphins use sound to both explore the environment and communicate, whereas terrestrial species have divided these two largely between vision and sound modalities.
- Current knowledge: Bottlenose dolphins in captivity can be taught referential sounds (e.g. for objects) and for acts, or modifiers (e.g. left or right). Can listen to nearby acoustic signal for echolocation, making joint attention possible.
- Future knowledge: There is no adequate theory-of-mind for these dolphins, including how they behave in false-belief tasks. Additionally, by incorporating dolphins into a theory of communication, it is possible to create a model that is not limited by terrestrial modes of living (e.g. differing division of labors for sound/vision modalities).
