Joan M. Sinnott

Regulation of voice amplitude by the monkey

Old World monkeys (Macaca) were trained to vocalize at a steady rate in the laboratory by the use of operant conditioning techniques with food as a reinforcer. While the animals were vocalizing, they were subjected to one of two noise bands (200–500 Hz or 8–16 kHz) at different sound pressure levels (70, 80, and 90 dB SPL). Vocal amplitude was measured as a function of the SPL of the noise bands. The monkeys increased voice amplitude to the band of low‐frequency noise but not to the high‐frequency band. These results suggest that in monkey, as in man, a relation exists between speaking and hearing: both man and monkey will increase voice amplitude in the presence of masking noise of the appropriate spectral composition. Subject Classification: 65.22; 70.20.

Speech sound discrimination by monkeys and humans

Old World monkeys were trained with an operant conditioning technique to discriminate the natural speech sounds /ba/–/da/ and transferred to synthetic speech. Human and monkey difference thresholds for formant transitions were then compared along a seven‐step /ba/–/da/ continuum. Monkeys were not as sensitive as humans to differences in formant transition: the just noticeable difference for monkeys was about 320 Hz, and for humans, about 160 Hz. Although humans were more adept at intraphonemic discriminations than monkeys, their latencies to stimulus changes revealed evidence of ’’categorical perception’’ of the continuum: While latencies for the monkeys increased linearly as stimulus difference was decreased, human latencies were essentially constant for all interphonemic comparisons, but increased sharply for intraphonemic comparisons. We view these data as evidence for (a) similar sensory capacities in monkeys and humans, but (b) unique speech processing capacities in humans.Subject Classification: [43...

Frequency and intensity discrimination in Mongolian gerbils, African monkeys and humans

Frequency (delta F) and intensity (delta I) difference limens were directly compared in Mongolian gerbils (Meriones unguiculatus), Old World African Monkeys (Cercopithecus mitis, Cercocebus albigena), and humans. Methods employed a repeating background AX discrimination procedure, and positive (food) reinforcement for animals. For delta I, there were small quantitative differences between the species. At 1 kHz, 70 dB SPL, DLs averaged 2.82 dB for gerbils, 2.29 dB for monkeys, and 0.75 dB for humans. For delta F, there were larger differences between the species. At 1 kHz, 60 dB SPL, frequency DLs were highest for gerbils, averaging 108 Hz. DLs were lower for monkeys, averaging 32.6 Hz, similar to recently reported DLs for other Old World monkeys (Prosen et al., 1990). Human DLs, averaging 2.27 Hz, were markedly lower than those of either monkeys or gerbils. These results suggest that animals provide better models of human delta I than delta F.

A multidimensional scaling analysis of vowel discrimination in humans and monkeys

Multidimensional scaling (MDS) was used to compare perceptual maps for 10 synthetic English vowels in humans and Old World monkeys (Macaca fuscata andCercopithecus albogularis). Subjects discriminated among the vowels using a repeating background procedure, and reaction times were submitted to an MDS analysis to derive measures of perceived similarity. The dimensions that emerged related to the frequencies of the first(F1), second(F2), and third(F3) formants. Human data indicated a good match to previous MDS studies using rating procedures or confusion matrices: The dominant dimension mapped onto vowelF2, the phonetically most important formant, and the second and third dimensions mapped ontoF1 andF3, respectively.For monkeys, equal weightings occurred forF1 andF2, andF3 was not clearly represented. Monkey sensitivity to the formants appeared to relate to formant amplitudes. If monkeys are giving an accurate representation of the psychoacoustic relations among the formants, then our human results suggest that species-specific mechanisms, reflecting the salience of the phonetic feature of advancement, may contribute to vowel coding in humans.

Species‐specific coding in bird song

Red‐winged blackbirds and brown‐headed cowbirds were trained with operant conditioning techniques and food reinforcement to categorize complex song themes from both their own (conspecific) and from the other (alien) species’ vocal repertoire. Following training, songs were separated into initial and terminal portions and birds were retested for identification of the isolated song elements. Results revealed no species differences in identifying the ’’introductory note’’ portions of redwing and cowbird song; however, redwings were superior to cowbirds in identifying terminal redwing ’’trills,’’ while cowbirds were superior in identifying terminal cowbird ’’whistles.’’

Differences in American English, Spanish, and monkey perception of thesay-stay trading relation

An interesting phenomenon in human speech perception is the trading relation, in which two different acoustic cues both signal the same phonetic percept. The present study compared American English, Spanish, and monkey listeners in their perception of the trading relation between gap duration andFl transition onset frequency in a syntheticsay-stay continuum. For all the subjects, increased gap duration caused perception to change fromsay tostay; however, subjects differed in the extent to which theFl cue traded with gap duration. For American English listeners, a change from a low to a highF1 onset caused a phoneme boundary shift of 26 msec toward shorter gap durations, indicating a strong trading relation. For Spanish listeners, the shift was significantly smaller at 13.7 msec, indicating a weaker trading relation. For monkeys, there was no shift at all, indicating no trading relation. These results provide evidence that thesay-stay trading relation is dependent on perceptual learning from linguistic exposure.

Perception of place-of-articulation information in natural speech by monkeys versus humans

Four monkeys and 6 humans representing five different native languages were compared in the ability to categorize natural CV tokens of /b/ versus /d/ produced by 4 talkers of American English (2 male, 2 female) in four vowel contexts (/i, e, a, u/). A two-choice “left/right” procedure was used in which both percentage correct and response time data were compared between species. Both measures indicated striking context effects for monkeys, in that they performed better for the back vowels /a/ and /u/ than for the front vowels /i/ and /e/. Humans showed no context effects for the percentage correct measure, but their response times showed an enhancement for the /i/ vowel, in contrast with monkeys. Results suggest that monkey perception of place of articulation is more dependent than human perception on the direction of the F2 onset transitions of syllables, since back-vowel F2s differentiate /b/ and /d/ more distinctively. Although monkeys do not provide an accurate model of the adult human in place perception, they may be able to model the preverbal human infant before it learns a more speech-specific strategy of place information extraction.

Effects of syllable duration on stop-glide identification in syllable-initial and syllable-final position by humans and monkeys

Humans and monkeys were compared in their identification of phoneme boundaries along synthetic stop-glide continua in syllable-initial /ba/-/wa/ or syllable-final /bab/-/baw/ contrasts differing in overall syllable duration. For both contrasts, humans were first tested with a conventional written identification procedure. Here, similar phoneme boundaries emerged and shifted with increases in syllable duration toward longer transitions, as has previously been reported in the literature for syllable-initial data (Miller & Liberman, 1979). Humans and monkeys were then tested on these contrasts, using a go/no-go identification procedure specifically designed for monkeys. Here also, stop-glide boundaries emerged and shifted with increased syllable duration for both species, although monkey “boundaries” were at longer durations than humans’ in syllable-final position. The results indicate that there are both gross similarities and subtle differences between humans and monkeys with regard to the stop-glide context effect. The results are discussed in relation to the hypothesis that general mammalian auditory mechanisms are responsible for this effect.

Perception of chirps by Sykes's monkeys (Cercopithecus albogularis) and humans (Homo sapiens)

Four Sykess monkeys (Cercopithecus albogularis) and 4 humans (Homo sapiens) discriminated among 12 chirps presented in a repeating background paradigm. The test stimuli consisted of sets of 4 chirps recorded from Sykess monkeys, red-tailed monkeys (C. ascanius), and small East African birds. Reaction times were submitted to a multidimensional scaling analysis. All monkey listeners perceived the bird chirps as similar to each other and distinct from the monkey calls, whereas 3 of the 4 human listeners had difficulty distinguishing the bird chirps from the monkey calls. Both human and monkey subjects tended to perceive Sykess and red-tailed monkey calls as very similar to one another, but the degree of perceived similarity was greatest for the monkey listeners. The data suggest that the perceptual map of these calls is influenced by their biological significance in nature.

Methods to Assess the Processing of Speech Sounds by Animals

Here are described some procedures designed to assess the capacities of animals to detect, discriminate, and identify human speech sounds. All procedures use a go/no-go response, which is taught to animals using operant conditioning techniques based on positive (food) reinforcement. All procedures are easily learned by animals, and allow for direct comparisons with human subjects, who can be tested with the same methods.