Colbert-White Erin N, Hall Hannah C, Fragaszy Dorothy M
Department of Psychology, University of Puget Sound, 1500 N. Warner Street, Tacoma, WA, 98407, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of Georgia, 125 Baldwin Street, Athens, GA, 30602, USA.
Anim Cogn. 2016 May;19(3):459-69. doi: 10.1007/s10071-015-0946-1. Epub 2015 Dec 23.
Communicative competence is one measure of an individual's ability to navigate conversations with social partners. The current study explored the possibility of basic communicative competence in a non-mammal speaker, a speech-using African Grey parrot. Spontaneous conversations between one Grey named Cosmo and her caregiver were recorded, from which three corpora (i.e., bodies of text) of Cosmo's vocalizations were developed: (1) Baseline: Vocalizations containing no requests, (2) Ignored Requests: Vocalizations immediately following Cosmo's caregiver ignoring Cosmo's requests, and (3) Denied Requests: Vocalizations immediately following Cosmo's caregiver denying Cosmo's requests. The distributions of social (e.g., "I love you," kiss sounds) and nonsocial (e.g., answering machine beeps, "That's squirrel") vocalizations, as well as speech and nonword vocalizations, were statistically different across the three corpora. Additionally, qualitative analysis of the datasets indicated Cosmo was persistent in repeating vocalizations when denied and ignored, and interrupted her caregiver more often when requests were denied compared to ignored. Neither repetition nor interruption occurred during the Baseline conversations. The data indicate that despite the outcome being the same (i.e., request was unmet), Cosmo treated an ignored request differently than a denied request, modifying her vocalizations in accord with the specific context. Such modification is evidence of basic communicative competence.
交际能力是衡量个体与社会伙伴进行对话能力的一个指标。当前的研究探讨了非哺乳动物——会说话的非洲灰鹦鹉——具备基本交际能力的可能性。记录了一只名为科斯莫的灰鹦鹉与其照料者之间的自发对话，据此形成了三个科斯莫发声语料库（即文本集合）：（1）基线：不包含请求的发声；（2）被忽视的请求：科斯莫的照料者忽视科斯莫的请求后紧接着的发声；（3）被拒绝的请求：科斯莫的照料者拒绝科斯莫的请求后紧接着的发声。社交发声（如“我爱你”、亲吻声）和非社交发声（如答录机哔哔声、“那是松鼠”）的分布，以及言语发声和非单词发声，在这三个语料库中存在统计学差异。此外，对数据集的定性分析表明，科斯莫在被拒绝和被忽视时会持续重复发声，并且与被忽视相比，当请求被拒绝时她更频繁地打断照料者。在基线对话中既没有重复发声也没有打断情况发生。数据表明，尽管结果相同（即请求未得到满足），但科斯莫对待被忽视的请求与被拒绝的请求有所不同，会根据具体情境改变她的发声。这种改变是基本交际能力的证据。
