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A linguistic-pragmatic analysis of cat-induced deixis in cat-human interactions
(www.sciencedirect.com)
Summary made with Quivr/GPT-4 This document is a research paper from the Journal of Pragmatics, written by L. Cornips, M. van Koppen, S. Leufkens, and others. The paper investigates the communication between cats and humans, specifically focusing on how cats use deictic cues (pointing or indicating) to communicate their needs or desires to humans.
The researchers used four videos of a cat named Salma interacting with humans in her household. These videos were not originally recorded for scientific purposes, which means the interactions are natural and not influenced by the research goals. The researchers analyzed these videos using a tool called VideoNote and a combination of Systematic Text Condensation and the naturalistic inquiry method to code and summarize the data.
The paper discusses two specific interactions between Salma and the humans. In the first, Salma wants food and uses various cues, such as gazing and moving towards the food bowl, to communicate this to the humans. In the second interaction, Salma wants to go outside and uses similar cues, like moving towards the door and extending her paw towards the door handle, to indicate this to the humans.
The researchers found that these interactions follow a similar structure to human-to-human interactions, as described by Stukenbrock (2020). They also found that while these interactions initially seem to be imperative (Salma wants something and is trying to get the humans to provide it), they also have elements of declarative interactions (Salma is trying to share information about a certain object with the humans).
The key revelation of this paper is that cats are capable of using complex communication strategies to interact with humans. They can use their bodies and gaze to point and draw attention to objects, and they can structure their interactions in a way that mirrors human communication. This suggests that cats see humans as agentive partners in their interactions, which is a significant finding for understanding interspecies communication.
The potential benefits of this research include a deeper understanding of how cats communicate, which could improve our ability to interact with and care for them. It could also have implications for research into other forms of interspecies communication.
EDIT: original summary accidentally included information from another paper as well, this summary is now made only from the paper in the link.