Article ID: CBB085423128

Levels of communication: The talking horse experiments (2020)

unapi

In the early twentieth century, counting and speaking horses, like the famous Clever Hans or the “Horses of Elberfeld,” became widely debated subjects in experimental psychology. The idea was to determine whether their learning success was only a fraud, or if it might open up a new chapter in “animal psychology” - or even belong to the realm of parapsychology and telepathy. When their tricks were discovered, the teachers of the animals were marked as charlatans. Both the attempts to detect charlatans and the efforts to avoid this accusation during the talking horse experiments proceeded using the method of introducing new levels of communication into the human-animal interaction process in order to substantiate each respective standpoint. This paper argues that the scientific studies and debates on the talking horses are relevant not only from psychological, biological, and semiotic vantage points, but also from the perspective of communications theory, giving rise to the foundational issue of levels of communication.

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Article Irina Podgorny; Daniel Gethmann (2020) 'Please, come in.' Being a charlatan, or the question of trustworthy knowledge. Science in Context (pp. 355-361). unapi

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Authors & Contributors
Pearson, Chris
Moats, David
Rocca, Silvana
Else Vogel
Leporiere, Lorenzo
Dickinson, Kristin
Concepts
Animal psychology
Human-animal relationships
Animal behavior
Ethology
Psychology
Deceptions; hoaxes; frauds
Time Periods
20th century, early
19th century
20th century
Ancient
20th century, late
17th century
Places
United States
Germany
Palestine
Italy
France
Europe
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