Diana Reiss

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Diana Reiss
Born1948or1949(age 75–76) [1] [2]
Alma mater Temple University (PhD)
Occupationprofessor of psychology at Hunter College

Diana Reiss (born 1948 or 1949 [1] [2] in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania [3] ) is a professor of psychology at Hunter College [4] and in the graduate program of Animal Behavior and Comparative Psychology at the City University of New York. Reiss's research has focused on understanding cognition and communication in dolphins and other cetaceans. [5] Her important contributions include demonstrating mirror self-awareness in dolphins via the Mirror test. [6]

Contents

Her work in conservation and animal welfare includes "the protection of dolphins in the tuna-fishing industry and her current efforts to bring an end to the killing of dolphins in the drive hunts in Japan." [7]

She was the scientific advisor for The Cove [2] and wrote The Dolphin in the Mirror: Exploring Dolphin Minds and Saving Dolphin Lives.

Reiss earned a doctorate from Temple University. She was a professor and friend of actress Isabella Rossellini [8]

Bibliography

The following are a selection of Diana Reiss' peer-reviewed publications.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dolphin</span> Marine mammals, closely related to whales and porpoises

A dolphin is an aquatic mammal in the clade Odontoceti. Dolphins belong to the families Delphinidae, Platanistidae, Iniidae, Pontoporiidae, and possibly extinct Lipotidae. There are 40 extant species named as dolphins.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bottlenose dolphin</span> Genus of dolphin

The bottlenose dolphin is a toothed whale in the genus Tursiops. They are common, cosmopolitan members of the family Delphinidae, the family of oceanic dolphins. Molecular studies show the genus contains three species: the common bottlenose dolphin, the Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin, and Tamanend's bottlenose dolphin. Others, like the Burrunan dolphin, may be alternately considered their own species or be subspecies of T. aduncus. Bottlenose dolphins inhabit warm and temperate seas worldwide, being found everywhere except for the Arctic and Antarctic Circle regions. Their name derives from the Latin tursio (dolphin) and truncatus for the truncated teeth.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oceanic dolphin</span> Family of marine mammals

Oceanic dolphins or Delphinidae are a widely distributed family of dolphins that live in the sea. Close to forty extant species are recognised. They include several big species whose common names contain "whale" rather than "dolphin", such as the Globicephalinae. Delphinidae is a family within the superfamily Delphinoidea, which also includes the porpoises (Phocoenidae) and the Monodontidae. River dolphins are relatives of the Delphinoidea.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cetacean intelligence</span> Intellectual capacity of cetaceans

Cetacean intelligence is the overall intelligence and derived cognitive ability of aquatic mammals belonging in the infraorder Cetacea (cetaceans), including baleen whales, porpoises, and dolphins. In 2014, a study found for first time that the long-finned pilot whale has more neocortical neurons than any other mammal, including humans, examined to date.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Self-awareness</span> Capacity for introspection and individuation as a subject

In philosophy, self-awareness is the awareness and reflection of one's own personality or individuality, including traits, feelings, and behaviors. It is not to be confused with consciousness in the sense of qualia. While consciousness is being aware of one's body and environment, self-awareness is the recognition of that consciousness. Self-awareness is how an individual experiences and understands their own character, feelings, motives, and desires.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Animal cognition</span> Intelligence of non-human animals

Animal cognition encompasses the mental capacities of non-human animals, including insect cognition. The study of animal conditioning and learning used in this field was developed from comparative psychology. It has also been strongly influenced by research in ethology, behavioral ecology, and evolutionary psychology; the alternative name cognitive ethology is sometimes used. Many behaviors associated with the term animal intelligence are also subsumed within animal cognition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Common bottlenose dolphin</span> Species of dolphin

The common bottlenose dolphin or Atlantic bottlenose dolphin is one of three species of bottlenose dolphin in the genus Tursiops. The common bottlenose dolphin is a very familiar dolphin due to the wide exposure it receives in human care in marine parks and dolphinariums, and in movies and television programs. Common bottlenose dolphins inhabit temperate and tropical oceans throughout the world, absent only from polar waters. While formerly known simply as the bottlenose dolphin, this term is now applied to the genus Tursiops as a whole. As considerable genetic variation has been described within this species, even between neighboring populations, many experts think additional species may be recognized.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Animal language</span> Complex animal communication

Animal languages are forms of communication between animals that show similarities to human language. Animals communicate through a variety of signs, such as sounds and movements. Signing among animals may be considered a form of language if the inventory of signs is large enough. The signs are relatively arbitrary, and the animals seem to produce them with a degree of volition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mirror test</span> Animal self-awareness test

The mirror test—sometimes called the mark test, mirror self-recognition (MSR) test, red spot technique, or rouge test—is a behavioral technique developed in 1970 by American psychologist Gordon Gallup Jr. as an attempt to determine whether an animal possesses the ability of visual self-recognition. The MSR test is the traditional method for attempting to measure physiological and cognitive self-awareness. However, agreement has been reached that animals can be self-aware in ways not measured by the mirror test, such as distinguishing between their own and others' songs and scents, and being aware of their own bodies, while humans have abnormally good vision, and thus intelligence that is highly visual.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Human–animal communication</span> Verbal and non-verbal interspecies communication

Human–animal communication is the communication observed between humans and other animals, ranging from non-verbal cues and vocalizations to the use of language.

Cognitive specialization suggests that certain behaviors, often in the domain of social communication, are passed on to offspring and refined to be maximally beneficial by the process of natural selection. Specializations serve an adaptive purpose for an organism by allowing the organism to be better suited for its habitat. Over time, specializations often become essential to the species' continued survival. Cognitive specialization in humans has been thought to underlie the acquisition, development, and evolution of language, theory of mind, and specific social skills such as trust and reciprocity. These specializations are considered to be critical to the survival of the species, even though there are successful individuals who lack certain specializations, including those diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder or who lack language abilities. Cognitive specialization is also believed to underlie adaptive behaviors such as self-awareness, navigation, and problem solving skills in several animal species such as chimpanzees and bottlenose dolphins.

Louis Herman was an American marine biologist. He was a researcher of dolphin sensory abilities, dolphin cognition, and humpback whales. He was professor in the Department of Psychology and a cooperating faculty member of the Department of Oceanography at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. He founded the Kewalo Basin Marine Mammal Laboratory (KBMML) in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1970 to study bottlenose dolphin perception, cognition, and communication. In 1975, he pioneered the scientific study of the annual winter migration of humpback whales into Hawaiian waters. Together with Adam Pack, he founded The Dolphin Institute in 1993, a non-profit corporation dedicated to dolphins and whales through education, research, and conservation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Akeakamai</span> Bottlenose dolphin, subject of animal language research

Akeakamai was a female Atlantic bottlenose dolphin, who, along with a companion female dolphin named Phoenix, and later tankmates Elele and Hiapo, were the subjects of Louis Herman's animal language studies at the Kewalo Basin Marine Mammal Laboratory in Honolulu, Hawaii. The most well-known paper is the original work described in Herman, Richards, & Wolz (1984). Akeakamai was also the subject of many other scientific studies of dolphin cognition, language acquisition, and sensory abilities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elephant cognition</span> Intelligence and awareness in elephants

Elephant cognition is animal cognition as present in elephants. Most contemporary ethologists view the elephant as one of the world's most intelligent animals. Elephants manifest a wide variety of behaviors, including those associated with grief, learning, mimicry, playing, altruism, tool use, compassion, cooperation, self-awareness, memory, and communication. Recent evidence suggests that elephants may understand pointing, the ability to nonverbally communicate an object by extending a finger, or equivalent.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Animal consciousness</span> Quality or state of self-awareness within an animal

Animal consciousness, or animal awareness, is the quality or state of self-awareness within an animal, or of being aware of an external object or something within itself. In humans, consciousness has been defined as: sentience, awareness, subjectivity, qualia, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind. Despite the difficulty in definition, many philosophers believe there is a broadly shared underlying intuition about what consciousness is.

Secondary consciousness is an individual's accessibility to their history and plans. The ability allows its possessors to go beyond the limits of the remembered present of primary consciousness. Primary consciousness can be defined as simple awareness that includes perception and emotion. As such, it is ascribed to most animals. By contrast, secondary consciousness depends on and includes such features as self-reflective awareness, abstract thinking, volition and metacognition. The term was coined by Gerald Edelman.

Brenda McCowan is a research behaviorist interested in evolutionary, biological, and ecological aspects of animal behavior and communication. Her work focuses on improving the health and welfare of domesticated production animals, captive species, and wildlife using applied animal behavior and bioacoustics. She received her BS in Animal Physiology from Cornell University in 1985, and her PhD in Biological Anthropology from Harvard University in 1994. Dr. McCowan is the Program Head of Primate Behavioral Management at California National Primate Research Center, a position she has held since 2004. Dr. McCowan has been on the faculty at the University of California – Davis since 1999, and is currently an Associate Adjunct Professor in the Department of Population Health and Reproduction at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. She also heads the McCowan Lab of Behavioral Management at UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, and is affiliated with the SETI Institute, Hubbs-Sea World Institute, and Santa Fe Institute.

Lori Marino is the founder and executive director of The Kimmela Center for Animal Advocacy and founder and President of the Whale Sanctuary Project. She was formerly a senior lecturer at Emory University for 20 years and faculty affiliate at the Emory Center for Ethics. She is also a Creative Affiliate at the Safina Center.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cooperative pulling paradigm</span> Experimental design

The cooperative pulling paradigm is an experimental design in which two or more animals pull rewards toward themselves via an apparatus that they cannot successfully operate alone. Researchers use cooperative pulling experiments to try to understand how cooperation works and how and when it may have evolved.

The evolution of cognition is the process by which life on Earth has gone from organisms with little to no cognitive function to a greatly varying display of cognitive function that we see in organisms today. Animal cognition is largely studied by observing behavior, which makes studying extinct species difficult. The definition of cognition varies by discipline; psychologists tend define cognition by human behaviors, while ethologists have widely varying definitions. Ethological definitions of cognition range from only considering cognition in animals to be behaviors exhibited in humans, while others consider anything action involving a nervous system to be cognitive.

References

  1. 1 2 Freeman, Paul (September 13, 2011). "There's someone in there". San Jose Mercury News . Reiss, 62, is a professor of psychology at Hunter College
  2. 1 2 3 Dreifus, Claudia (September 20, 2010). "Studying the Big-Brained Dolphin". The New York Times . Retrieved September 23, 2010. Diana Reiss, 61, a professor of psychology at Hunter College
  3. 1 2 "Bio: Diana Reiss". National Geographic Society. Archived from the original on April 3, 2012. Retrieved November 24, 2014.
  4. "Diana ReissHunter College". Hunter College . Retrieved September 23, 2010.
  5. Milius, Susan (May 11, 2010). "Mirror, mirror on the wall, you're the scariest fish of all". Science News . Retrieved September 23, 2010.
  6. "In defense of dolphins » Scienceline". Scienceline. 2013-05-27. Retrieved 2017-03-10.
  7. "Diana Reiss". edge.org. Retrieved 27 February 2022.