Douglas Cross, Ph.D.
Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology
Ithaca College, Ithaca, NY 14850
cross@ithaca.edu

Dr. Cross investigated characteristics of communication and auditory perception of Atlantic Bottlenose dolphins and California sea lions. All research was conducted at the Living Seas Pavilion at the Epcot Center in Orlando, Florida. The animals participated in all phases of the investigations on a voluntary basis only. That is, animals were free to not enter into or to terminate participation at any time during any session. At no time was any form of negative coercion used before, during, or after any training or data collection session. During recording of evoked potentials animals were under similar conditions used during their regular husbandry/health examinations and were never out or the water for more than twelve minutes.

Auditory Discrimination Study
The fist project was the initial training phase of a study designed to investigate cerebral specialization for auditory perception of the Atlantic bottlenose dolphin and California Sea Lion. In the early stages of training depicted here, two dolphin subjects, "Bob" and "Christie", were trained to behaviorally "identify" and differentiate between natural prerecorded whistle vocalizations and pure tones presented underwater.

Surface Recorded Brain Potentials
A second study investigated the viability of using noninvasive, surface mounted electrodes for recording variations in brain wave patterns of Atlantic bottlenose dolphins and California sea lions. Both short- and long-latency auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) to pure tone signals and prerecorded dolphin whistles were successfully recorded from the skin surface.

These investigations were supported, in part, by Ithaca College Faculty Summer Research Grants.