Behavioral mechanisms underlying vocal communication in nonhuman primates

Seyfarth, Robert M.; Cheney, Dorothy L.

doi:10.3758/bf03199083

Cited by 45 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 77 publications

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“…Some such models are based either on direct reinforcement histories of test stimuli (e.g., Couvillon & Bitterman, 1992) or associative value transfer in which the rewarded member of a stimulus pair transfers some of its associative strength or value to the nonrewarded pair item (von Fersen, Wynne, Delius, & Staddon, 1991). Studies of social concepts, which are addressed elsewhere in this issue by Seyfarth & Cheney, provide additional evidence of associative processes being the representation "glue" in monkeys rather than the more abstract propositional encoding of the human investigators (cf., Thompson, 1995;Seyfarth & Cheney, 1997).…”

Section: Resemblance By Relation or By Association?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Categorical Perception and Conceptual Judgments by Nonhuman Primates: The Paleological Monkey and the Analogical Ape

Thompson

Oden²

2000

Cognitive Science

213

166

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Studies of the conceptual abilities of nonhuman primates demonstrate the substantial range of these abilities as well as their limitations. Such abilities range from categorization on the basis of shared physical attributes, associative relations and functions to abstract concepts as reflected in analogical reasoning about relations between relations. The pattern of results from these studies point to a fundamental distinction between monkeys and apes in both their implicit and explicit conceptual capacities. Monkeys, but not apes, might be best regarded as "paleo-logicans" in the sense that they form common class concepts of identity on the basis of identical predicates (i.e., shared features). The discrimination of presumably more abstract relations commonly involves relatively simple procedural strategies mediated by associative processes likely shared by all mammals. There is no evidence that monkeys can perceive, let alone judge, relations-between-relations. This analogical conceptual capacity is found only in chimpanzees and humans. Interestingly, the "analogical ape," like the child, can make its analogical knowledge explicit only if it is first provided with a symbol system by which propositional representations can be encoded and manipulated

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Section: Resemblance By Relation or By Association?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Categorical Perception and Conceptual Judgments by Nonhuman Primates: The Paleological Monkey and the Analogical Ape

Thompson

Oden²

2000

Cognitive Science

213

166

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…The vocalisations are not stereotypic but highly variable (19,23,26), however. They vary according to social contexts and learned interpretations of the environment (18,38,55). In humans, species specific vocalisations become modified by environmental models soon after birth and humans also learn to suppress, simulate and pretend emotional expressions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Shared means and meanings in vocal expression of man and macaque

Leinonen

Laakso²,

Carlson

et al. 2003

Logopedics Phoniatrics Vocology

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Vocalisations of six Macaca arctoides that were categorised according to their social context and judgements of naive human listeners as expressions of plea/submission, anger, fear, dominance, contentment and emotional neutrality, were compared with vowel samples extracted from simulations of emotional-motivational connotations by the Finnish name Saara and English name Sarah. The words were spoken by seven Finnish and 13 English women. Humans and monkeys resembled each other in the following respects. 'Neutral', 'pleading' and 'commanding' had a similar F0 level. Loud vocalisations of intense 'anger' and 'fear' had both high F0, and the highest values were encountered for 'fear'. Compared with 'neutral', the audiosignal waveform of 'plea/submission' was more sinusoidal, seen in the spectrum as an attenuation of formants and an emphasis of the fundamental, whereas the signal waveform of 'commanding' was more complex corresponding to an increase in noise and a wider distribution of spectral energy. 'Frightened' samples included rather harmonic segments with emphasis of the fundamental, and 'angry' samples included more noise at the low end of the spectrum and often segments with low-frequency ( < 100 Hz) edged modulation. Sounds resembling soft and noisy 'content' grunts of the monkey do not appear in Finnish or English speech but 'content' utterances were, however, associated with low speech pressure, attenuation of harmonics and increase in noise.

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“…The modulation of the acoustic structure of the golden-backed uakari tchó call can possibly be a powerful feature for these monkeys to maintain and coordinate their social activities. Nevertheless, playback experiments would still be required to verify whether golden-backed uakaris recognize the information about both the signaling individual and the behavioral context encoded in this particular vocalisation (Kajikawa and Hasegawa 2000;Seyfarth and Cheney 1997;Wich et al 2003).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Vocal Repertoire of Golden-backed Uakaris (Cacajao melanocephalus): Call Structure and Context

2010

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The study of vocal behavior can reveal important aspects of how and why a species communicates in relation to ecological and social challenges. We here focus on vocal communication in golden-backed uakaris (Cacajao melanocephalus), diurnal, pitheciine monkeys that exhibit fission-fusion social organization and typically inhabit dense forests that limit the potential for visual communication. Moreover, the species spends little time engaged in tactile or olfactory communication, e.g., social grooming and scent marking, respectively. Hence, vocalizations may be very important for the coordination of social organization in these monkeys. We 1) categorized golden-backed uakari vocalizations, 2) ascertained their behavioral context, and 3) investigated whether golden-backed uakari calls can encode information about the signaler. We observed the monkeys during 2 wet seasons in the flooded igapó forest of Jaú National Park, Brazil. We showed that golden-backed uakaris have 9 call types in their vocal repertoire, all distinguishable by ear and from analysis of spectrograms. Some calls, e.g., play-specific calls, were used only in particular behavioral contexts, and by individuals of specific age, whereas others were emitted under a range of situations. The structure of the loud tchó call varied among individuals, and according to behavioral context, i.e., whether individuals were foraging/feeding, traveling, or performing agonistic interactions. This knowledge of the species' vocal repertoire is valuable for surveying the monkeys acoustically in habitats where visual surveys are difficult.

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Behavioral mechanisms underlying vocal communication in nonhuman primates

Cited by 45 publications

References 77 publications

Categorical Perception and Conceptual Judgments by Nonhuman Primates: The Paleological Monkey and the Analogical Ape

Categorical Perception and Conceptual Judgments by Nonhuman Primates: The Paleological Monkey and the Analogical Ape

Shared means and meanings in vocal expression of man and macaque

Vocal Repertoire of Golden-backed Uakaris (Cacajao melanocephalus): Call Structure and Context

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