Aside from demonstrating yet another comparison between apes and humans, I believe this shows that by reacting to false impressions, one can confuse the map with the territory... that goes for both computer simulations, and more importantly, reality--and its convincing manifestations.
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Chimpanzees Empathize with Animated Apes Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/09/09/chimp-animation-print.html Sept. 9, 2009 -- Computer animations stimulate contagious yawning in chimpanzees, according to a new study. The research provides the world's first direct evidence that a non-human animal can empathize with an animated fictional depiction. Since the compulsion to yawn after watching another individual yawn is not a conscious decision, the study suggests even non-living representations of humans and animals can affect the emotions and certain subsequent actions of humans and chimps at a subconscious level. Prior research has found that children who play violent video games may act in a more violent manner later. In this case, however, the experiment just led to a lot of relaxed chimps. Sometimes the chimp yawning "was pretty dramatic, with them really stretching their jaw muscles, but never any stretching of arms," lead author Matthew Campbell, a postdoctoral fellow at Emory University's Yerkes National Primate Research Center, told Discovery News. He and colleagues J. Devyn Carter, Darby Proctor, Michelle Eisenberg and Frans de Waal showed computer animations to 24 chimpanzees.
In addition to depictions of chimps yawning, the animations included control expressions of chimps displaying an open-mouthed "play face," head bobbing, tooth clacking (often made during grooming) and hooting, but without any vocalizations. When viewing the yawning animated chimps, the test chimpanzees usually yawned too. Although boredom with the exercise caused more yawning as the chimps viewed the control expressions, the yawns actually decreased in time as the primates watched the animated yawners, proving that contagious yawning, and not tired disinterest, was the cause. Contagious yawning, Campbell explained, may have evolved to allow some animals "to coordinate activity better, resting when other individuals are resting" in order that they "can travel when it's time to travel, eat when it's time to eat" and so on. The study findings are published in the latest Proceedings of the Royal Society B. It's long been known that non-human animals respond to events they see and hear on television, but generally these viewers think what they are watching is real. "When dogs respond to barks coming from the TV, or cats swat at (televised) birds, they don't know that it's fake, that the animal isn't actually there," Campbell said. "People even talk about their pets walking behind the TV, as if to find out where (the other animals) went." In contrast, Campbell said his team's computer animations "were obviously fake." "I think the animations look good, but they do not look real, and I'm sure that they do not look real to the chimps either," he said, adding that "if the chimps thought that the animations were real, as if a live chimpanzee was right in front of them, they would have tried to interact with it, in either an aggressive or friendly way." Yet the chimps did identify on some level with the animations, demonstrated by the contagious yawning. That opens the door to future studies on animals, including humans, using animations. Cartoons and computer animations can control for lighting and background, as well as show rare or even "impossible" behaviors, meaning actions that aren't normally possible for the species in question. Steven Platek, editor-in-chief of Frontiers in Evolutionary Neuroscience and an associate editor of the journal Evolutionary Psychology, told Discovery News he agrees with the new study. "One of the main roadblocks to studying such behaviors in non-human animals is the ability to obtain and/or create high quality stimuli designed to trigger or elicit behavior that one is interested in," Platek said. "This new study by Campbell and colleagues shows that utilizing high quality 3-D computer animations may have solved this problem." Campbell indicated additional research might help children with autism, who appear to benefit from working with animations. Future studies, he said, may also "tell us what to include in educational applications and what to avoid in entertainment not meant to be imitated."
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Makes perfect sense.
When I play video games with violence, over time i respond to my anger with violence much sooner. I remember when I used to play counterstrike, a much touted shooter.
One day my dad pissed me off and I went through a day dream where I stabbed him with a knife I was holding. He was just pissed cuz I wasnt loading dishes into the sink, properly and because he is depressed about his mairrage and life and takes little things out of proportion unconciously, as a way to vent his frustration that is impossible to vent.
I have stopped playing those games and pretty soon will cease watching TV. I play a soccer game every day for a bit, its calming because it takes me back to a secure point in life and I can really get into it because I subconciously am very competative. I always have a sense of how good I am in relation to others. Very difficult to see through this and acknowledge that judgements are mental acts of guidence and can become useless and destructive when they are irrelevant to important goals in your life.
Whats your experience with this, ARDEN. Glad to hear about it.
-------------------- if you ever feel lost, just remember, life is not a journey, it is entertainment, all 4 fun...
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