Word: rios
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Sanchez, who focuses his writings largely on Puerto Rican culture and cultural history, is best known for his 1976 novel La Gauaracha de Macho Camacho (Macho Camacho's Beat). He teaches one semester at the University of Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras and one semester at CUNY each year
Unlike the sunny-dispositioned dolphins, sea lions radiate intensity. Schusterman chose them for his research because they are easily trained. He did not attempt to teach seven-year-old Rio a language. Instead, he wanted to determine if the female sea lion could understand logical relationships between symbols presented on poster boards. For instance, by rewarding the sea lion selectively, trainers taught Rio that a symbol looking like a mug was equivalent to one that looked like a watch. Then she was taught that the watch symbol was equivalent to a third symbol that looked like a bomb. The question...
Schusterman devised an elaborate procedure to ensure against cuing: signals to Rio were delivered by a trainer who did not know the correct answer. Rio would start the test by choosing one of two randomly selected symbols on a scoreboard-like apparatus next to her tank. She would then be presented with two new icons and asked to pick which one was logically equivalent to the symbol she had chosen earlier...
Unlike dolphins, sea lions seem to treat training as if it were a life-or- death matter. At the start of each session Rio rivets her stare on her trainers. When wrong, she barks in frustration. But on one particular day she had little to complain about, answering correctly 24 out of 28 times. Schusterman takes this performance as proof that the animal has at least some of the cognitive skills required for language. Thus, he says, it is now much easier for him to accept that bigger-brained dolphins and apes understand and manipulate their vocabularies symbolically as well...
Rafael-Sanchez, a professor at the University of Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras, is best known in the U.S. for his 1976 novel La guaracha de Macho Camacho (Macho Camacho's Beat...