The acoustic features of vervet monkey alarm calls

Owren, Michael J.; Bernacki, Robert H.

doi:10.1121/1.396477

Cited by 103 publications

(62 citation statements)

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“…Vervet monkeys, for instance, use four different grunts when approaching a dominant member of their group, when approaching a subordinate, when moving into an open area, and upon sighting another group. Their eagle alarm resembles these grunts in bandwidth and spectral features (Owren & Bernacki, 1988;Seyfarth & Cheney, 1984). The five call types are acoustically similar, but their referents differ markedly (see also Seyfarth & Cheney, 1997).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Behavioral mechanisms underlying vocal communication in nonhuman primates

Seyfarth

Cheney

1997

Animal Learning & Behavior

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In the wild, nonhuman primate vocalizations signal the presence of different predators, provide information about the group's location and movement, facilitate friendly interactions, and lead to reconciliation between individuals who have recently exchanged aggression. Current research examines the mechanisms that underlie such communication. Playback experiments demonstrate that subjects treat vocalizations as semantic signals, in the sense that they compare signals according to their referents and not just their acoustic properties. Results provide no evidence, however, that subjects recognize one another's mental states. Calls that provide information about the group's location or movement are given by baboons only when they themselves are lost; individuals at the group's center apparently do not call to inform peripheral animals of their location. Calls that lead to reconciliation are best explained by assuming that callers and recipients have learned, through experience, that a vocalization is rarely followed by aggression and often followed by friendly behavior. The inability of animals to recognize what other individuals know, believe, or desire constitutes a fundamental difference between nonhuman primate vocal communication and human language.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Behavioral mechanisms underlying vocal communication in nonhuman primates

Seyfarth

Cheney

1997

Animal Learning & Behavior

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“…To the extent that the source/filter theory of vocal production applies to many animal vocalizations ͑Fitch and Fitch and Hauser, 2002͒, various well-understood signal processing techniques, developed by speech scientists, are available to modify formants without changing other aspects of the signal. For example, LPC-based analysis and resynthesis can be used to artificially separate the signal into source and filter components, if certain preconditions are fulfilled ͑Fitch, 1997; Owren and Bernacki, 1988͒. Then, the filter component can be modified in specific ways, and source and filter can be recombined to create a naturalsounding vocalization where only the spectral prominences have been shifted ͑Moorer, 1979; Moore, 1990;Smith et al, 2005͒. These and similar techniques can easily be implemented on desktop systems using software such as MATLAB or PRAAT.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rhesus macaques spontaneously perceive formants in conspecific vocalizations

Fitch

Fritz²

2006

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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We provide a direct demonstration that nonhuman primates spontaneously perceive changes in formant frequencies in their own species-typical vocalizations, without training or reinforcement. Formants are vocal tract resonances leading to distinctive spectral prominences in the vocal signal, and provide the acoustic determinant of many key phonetic distinctions in human languages. We developed algorithms for manipulating formants in rhesus macaque calls. Using the resulting computer-manipulated calls in a habituation/dishabituation paradigm, with blind video scoring, we show that rhesus macaques spontaneously respond to a change in formant frequencies within the normal macaque vocal range. Lack of dishabituation to a "synthetic replica" signal demonstrates that dishabituation was not due to an artificial quality of synthetic calls, but to the formant shift itself. These results indicate that formant perception, a significant component of human voice and speech perception, is a perceptual ability shared with other primates.

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“…There is an increasing consensus among researchers in the field that the source-filter-theory, originally put forward to explain speech production ͑Fant, 1960͒, serves as a useful model for mammalian sound production ͑Andrew, 1976; Owren and Bernacki, 1988;Riede and Fitch, 1999͒. The theory posits that a vocal signal is produced by the vocal folds ͑the source͒, and is subsequently shaped by the resonance properties of the vocal tract ͑the filter͒.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The relationship between acoustic structure and semantic information in Diana monkey alarm vocalization

Riede

Zuberbühler

2003

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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Mammalian vocal production mechanisms are still poorly understood despite their significance for theories of human speech evolution. Particularly, it is still unclear to what degree mammals are capable of actively controlling vocal-tract filtering, a defining feature of human speech production. To address this issue, a detailed acoustic analysis on the alarm vocalization of free-ranging Diana monkeys was conducted. These vocalizations are especially interesting because they convey semantic information about two of the monkeys' natural predators, the leopard and the crowned eagle. Here, vocal tract and sound source parameter in Diana monkey alarm vocalizations are described. It is found that a vocalization-initial formant downward transition distinguishes most reliably between eagle and leopard alarm vocalization. This finding is discussed as an indication of articulation and alternatively as the result of a strong nasalization effect. It is suggested that the formant modulation is the result of active vocal filtering used by the monkeys to encode semantic information, an ability previously thought to be restricted to human speech.

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The acoustic features of vervet monkey alarm calls

Cited by 103 publications

References 0 publications

Behavioral mechanisms underlying vocal communication in nonhuman primates

Behavioral mechanisms underlying vocal communication in nonhuman primates

Rhesus macaques spontaneously perceive formants in conspecific vocalizations

The relationship between acoustic structure and semantic information in Diana monkey alarm vocalization

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