User:Reganmv10/sandbox

Evaluating content:
- The subsection called "Behaviourist approach" in the background of this articles uses two large block quotes that could probably have been summed up in someone's own words to make the section easier to look at/read and pick out information.

- In the section of "Criticism" it might be worth mentioning the religious point of view that animals do not possess souls or minds like humans which is a popular belief in much of the world. Additional viewpoints about animals not having emotions need to be included to make this article more neutral.

- The section "Examples" could probably updated with more recent studies and citations.

- There could be a section or bigger section on the neuroscience of the emotional brain of animals, or mention imaging scans of animals. This article does not delve too much into any science on this topic in the last 10 years and I feel there have been significant advances that make more current data very relevant to the ever-evolving area of biology

Evaluating tone:
- I feel like the Darwinian point of view is pretty obviously the stance of the author(s) of this article which makes it not very neutral, and does not show both sides.

- As I mentioned, this article is definitely biased towards animals having emotions, not much on the viewpoint of animals not having emotions. More information should be research and added to go against the idea of animals having emotions.

Evaluating sources:
- All are, for lack of a better term, "clickable", but most require a payment or institutional access which makes it hard for those who don't to fact check and check citation relevancy and credibility.

Checking the talk page:
- There is lots of conversation about how biased the article is, and how it focuses on the belief that if animals do have emotions they would be analogous to humans emotions. A lot of people have issues with this anthropocentric attitude.

- A general consensus is that rewrite's need to happen on some of the really wordy jargon aspects, as well as the large block quote portions.

- The Wiki-projects associated with this article are as follows: Psychology, Animals, Cognitive science and Animal rights. These are all rated C-class with the Animals being rated C-class mid-importance.

- The article discusses many aspects we discussed in class but not to any of the same detail and it seems to misrepresent some information as well. For the ideas that it does have the right info about it seems to only scratch the surface and does not go into nearly enough detail. It also needs updating on current models and stress that older models are in fact the older models and aren't considered current at all.

Updated information - New technological advances in neuroscience[edit]
While it is important for any article to demonstrate the history of the topic it discusses, it seems to me that this article only talks about outdated ideas as if they aren't. I would like to see a larger neuroscience section that displays research on emotions in animals using modern brain imaging and other research techniques in an empirical way that suggest the presence of emotions in animals. There's only so much you can philosophize about a topic before modern science needs to come in. Reganmv10 (talk) 18:48, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

Language
The modelling of human language in animals is known as animal language research. There have been many examples of modelling of human language through entrainment in primates. Most notably are Nim Chimpsky, a chimpanzee; Koko, a gorilla and Kanzi, a bonobo. Cognitive abilities are also demonstrated through the natural communication through vocalizations performed by non-human primates in the wild, with sophisticated systems of alarm calls and emotional vocalizations as well as adaptive behavioural responses to other animal's calls.

Modeling of Human Language
The experiment called Project Nim was one of the first experiments that aimed to show nonhuman primates could be taught a human form of language. The experiment conducted on the chimpanzee dubbed "Nim Chimpsky" took place in the 1970's and was the idea of Herbet S. Terrace, to try to disprove the notion put forth by Naom Chomsky, for whom the chimp was named, stating that language is an exclusively human ability. Nim was taught 125 signs in his life, and constantly impressed those he met with his ability to seemingly understand human nature and his mischievous behaviours. Similar experiments took place on two other primates, Koko and Kanzi. Koko was able to learn many signs, as well as some novel vocalizations to indicate emotional state. Kanzi learned to model human language in an entirely different way. He was able to learn 348 geometrical symbols that represented different words, and to combine symbols in a type of proto-grammar to convey meaning and understanding. His keepers also claim that he understands the meaning of up to 3000 human words. These examples of stunning cognition demonstrate the near-human ability of some trained primates to learn and retain the ability to communicate with humans.

Communication in the Wild
Communication of animals in the wild has been studied extensively. Calls with specific intent, such as alarm calls or mating calls has been observed in many orders of animals, including primates. A study done on East African Vervet monkeys showed that in the wild this species was able to produce at least 5 acoustically different alarm calls in response, and that other monkeys responded differently according to which alarm had been sounded. This indicated a clear communication that there is a predator nearby and what kind of predator it is, eliciting a specific response. A different species of monkeys, the wild Campbell's monkeys have also been known to produce a sequence of vocalization that require a specific order to elicit a specific behaviour in other monkeys. Changing the order of the sounds changes the resulting behaviour, or meaning, of the call. Diana monkeys were studied in a habituation-dishabituation experiment that demonstrated the ability to attend to the semantic content of calls rather than simply to acoustic nature. Primates have also been observed responding to alarm calls of other species. Crested Guinea fowl, a ground-dwelling fowl, produce a single type of alarm call for all predators it detects. Diana monkeys have been observed to respond to the most likely reason for the call, typically a human or leopard, based on the situation and respond according to that. If they deem a leopard is the more likely predator in the vicinity they will produce their own leopard-specific alarm call but if they think it is a human, they will remain silent and hidden.

Bibliography for Primate Cognition
roots of language

Language as a tool: The analogy to Primate cognition

great apes and children infer causal relations between variation and co-variation