Topics
Cognitive Ergonomics
Cognitive Modelling
Complexity/Complex Systems/Dynamic Systems
Computational Neuroscience
Connectionism
Information Theory
Learning Systems
Machine Learning and Vision
Multiagent Systems
Robotics
Schemata
Generative Grammar
Language
Language Acquisition
Language Variation and Change
Lexical Functional Grammar
Linguistics
Natural Language
Phonetics
Phonology
Semantics
Sense and Reference
Speech Perception
Syntax
Tense and Aspect
Brain
Cerebral Cortex
Cognitive Neuroscience
Hippocampus
Limbic System
Neural Networks
Neuron
Time/Timing
The Design of Animal Communication
When animals, including humans, communicate, they convey information and express their perceptions of the world. Because different organisms are able to produce and perceive different signals, the animal world contains a diversity of communication systems. Based on the approach laid out in the 1950s by Nobel laureate Nikolaas Tinbergen, this book looks at animal communication from the four perspectives of mechanisms, ontogeny, function, and phylogeny.
The book's great strength is its broad comparative perspective, which enables the reader to appreciate the diversity of solutions to particular problems of signal design and perception. For example, although the neural circuitry underlying the production of acoustic signals is different in frogs, songbirds, bats, and humans, each involves a set of dedicated pathways designed to solve particular problems of communicative efficiency. Such comparative findings form the basis of a conceptual framework for understanding the mechanisms underlying communication systems and their evolution.