756 research outputs found
Black-capped Chickadee (Poecile atricapillus)
No full textRecordings were provided by Marc Avey, Ph.D, Jenna V. Congdon, John Hoang, and Prof. Christopher B. Sturdy, Ph.D - Department of Psychology
University of Alberta (Canada).
Arousal was assessed based on research showing increase of neural activity in response to high-threat predator models: Avey, M. T., Hoeschele, M., Moscicki, M. K., Bloomfield, L. L., & Sturdy, C. B. (2011). Neural correlates of threat perception: neural equivalence of conspecific and heterospecific mobbing calls is learned. PLoS One, 6(8), e23844
Categories, concepts, and calls : auditory perceptual mechanisms and cognitive abilities across different types of birds.
No full textAlthough involving different animals, preparations, and objectives, our laboratories (Sturdy's and Cook's) are mutually interested in category perception and concept formation. The Sturdy laboratory has a history of studying perceptual categories in songbirds, while Cook laboratory has a history of studying abstract concept formation in pigeons. Recently, we undertook a suite of collaborative projects to combine our investigations to examine abstract concept formation in songbirds, and perception of songbird vocalizations in pigeons. This talk will include our recent findings of songbird category perception, songbird abstract concept formation (same/different task), and early results from pigeons' processing of songbird vocalizations in a same/different task. Our findings indicate that (1) categorization in birds seems to be most heavily influenced by acoustic, rather than genetic or experiential factors (2) songbirds treat their vocalizations as perceptual categories, both at the level of the note and species/whole call, (3) chickadees, like pigeons, can perceive abstract, same-different relations, and (4) pigeons are not as good at discriminating chickadee vocalizations as songbirds (chickadees and finches). Our findings suggest that although there are commonalities in complex auditory processing among birds, there are potentially important comparative differences between songbirds and non-songbirds in their treatment of certain types of auditory objects
Sex differences in the visual lateralization of black-capped chickadees in a rescue paradigm
No full textAuditory same/different concept learning and generalization in black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus)
No full textAbstract concept learning was thought to be uniquely human, but has since been observed in many other species. Discriminating same from different is one abstract relation that has been studied frequently. In the current experiment, using operant conditioning, we tested whether black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus) could discriminate sets of auditory stimuli based on whether all the sounds within a sequence were the same or different from one another. The chickadees were successful at solving this same/different relational task, and transferred their learning to same/different sequences involving novel combinations of training notes and novel notes within the range of pitches experienced during training. The chickadees showed limited transfer to pitches that was not used in training, suggesting that the processing of absolute pitch may constrain their relational performance. Our results indicate, for the first time, that black-capped chickadees readily form relational auditory same and different categories, adding to the list of perceptual, behavioural, and cognitive abilities that make this species an important comparative model for human language and cognition.Peer reviewe
Note types and coding in parid vocalizations. II: The chick-a-dee call of the mountain chickadee (Poecile gambeli),”
No full textAbstract: We describe the chick-a-dee call of the mountain chickadee, Poecile gambeli (Ridgway, 1886), by classifying the various call notes into six types (A, A/B, B, C, D h , and D). Note-type analyses identify a high degree of similarity among A and A/B notes in the ascending duration, descending duration, and note peak frequency, and among A/B and B notes in the end frequency. This statistical result paralleled disagreements between human sorters where A, A/B, and B notes were most often misclassified. Moreover, virtually all parameters measured showed significant variation across individuals. Therefore, the particular acoustic cues used in the discrimination of note types and individuals remain unknown, but it is likely that a constellation of features is used rather than one or two particularly salient features. Résumé : Nous décrivons le chant d'appel de la mésange des montagnes, Poecile gambeli (Ridgway, 1886), en classifiant les différentes notes en six catégories (A, A/B, B, C, D h et D). Une analyse comparative de ces différents types de notes a permis d'identifier un haut degré de similarité entre les notes A et A/B dans la durée des parties ascendante et descendante, ainsi que dans la fréquence la plus haute de la note et entre les notes A/B et B dans la fréquence finale. Ce résultat statistique corrobore les désaccords qui surviennent lors du tri visuel par des humains, où les notes de type A, A/B et B sont souvent mal classées. Si toutes les caractéristiques mesurées présentent une variation significative entre individus, on ne connaît toujours pas celles qui sont effectivement utilisées dans la différenciation des notes et dans le processus de reconnaissance individuelle. Il semble plus probable qu'une combinaison de plusieurs caracté-ristiques soit utilisée plutôt qu'une ou deux caractéristiques en particulier. Bloomfield et al. 79
Reverberlocation in chickadees?
No full textChickadee songs provide conspecifics with information about the locations of singers. Song amplitude, frequency, and reverberation all vary with distance, and it is thought that chickadees use such cues to estimate distance. The current study examined transmission of chickadee songs in an open field to assess whether other cues such as relative changes in inter-note timing or relative differences in spectral energy might also provide useful information about a singer's location. Surprisingly, the difference between direct signal energy and reverberant spectral energy provided clear indications of how far a song had traveled. Preliminary analyses suggest that this cue may be robust to variations in source level, note duration, note frequency, and transmission loss. If chickadees use this cue to judge auditory distance, then this may explain why they maintain specific spectral ratios between the notes within their songs. Specifically, the spectral spacing of notes within songs appears to be directly related to chickadee auditory filter bandwidth. We describe ranging of a singing chickadee based on the spectral profile of its songs as reverberlocation (construed as an instance of passive echolocation) because it involves comparisons between a direct signal and echoes of a signal
Manual versus automatic identification of black-capped chickadee (Poecile atricapillus) vocalizations
No full textThe early bird gets the worm: Determining food preference in Black-Capped Chickadees (Poecile atricapillus)
No full textBody Size Correlates Negatively with Bioacoustic Measures of tseet Calls of Black-capped Chickadees (Poecile atricapillus)
No full textBird communication: Two voices are better than one
No full textAbstractHow do emperor penguins find their mates on a featureless ice flow, packed at densities of ten animals per square meter? A recent study has revealed how use of their ‘two-voice’ calls enables emperor penguins to locate their mates and chicks under some of nature’s most extreme conditions
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