1,721,096 research outputs found
Domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) recognise meaningful content in monotonous streams of read speech
No full textDomestic dogs (Canis familiaris) can recognize basic phonemic information from human speech and respond to commands. Commands are typically presented in isolation with exaggerated prosody known as dog-directed speech (DDS) register. Here, we investigate whether dogs can spontaneously identify meaningful phonemic content in a stream of putatively irrelevant speech spoken in monotonous prosody, without congruent prosodic cues. To test this ability, dogs were played recordings of their owners reading a meaningless text which included a short meaningful or meaningless phrase, either read with unchanged reading prosody or with an exaggerated DDS prosody. We measured the occurrence and duration of dogs’ gaze at their owners. We found that, while dogs were more likely to detect and respond to inclusions that contained meaningful phrases spoken with DDS prosody, they were still able to detect these meaningful inclusions spoken in a neutral reading prosody. Dogs detected and responded to meaningless control phrases in DDS as frequently as to meaningful content in neutral reading prosody, but less often than to meaningful content in DDS. This suggests that, while DDS prosody facilitates the detection of meaningful content in human speech by capturing dogs’ attention, dogs are nevertheless capable of spontaneously recognizing meaningful phonemic content within an unexaggerated stream of speech.</p
Transmission Characteristics of Primate Vocalizations: Implications for Acoustic Analyses
No full textAcoustic analyses have become a staple method in field studies of animal vocal communication, with nearly all investigations using computer-based approaches to extract specific features from sounds. Various algorithms can be used to extract acoustic variables that may then be related to variables such as individual identity, context or reproductive state. Habitat structure and recording conditions, however, have strong effects on the acoustic structure of sound signals. The purpose of this study was to identify which acoustic parameters reliably describe features of propagated sounds. We conducted broadcast experiments and examined the influence of habitat type, transmission height, and re-recording distance on the validity (deviation from the original sound) and reliability (variation within identical recording conditions) of acoustic features of different primate call types. Validity and reliability varied independently of each other in relation to habitat, transmission height, and re-recording distance, and depended strongly on the call type. The smallest deviations from the original sounds were obtained by a visually-controlled calculation of the fundamental frequency. Start- and end parameters of a sound were most susceptible to degradation in the environment. Because the recording conditions can have appreciable effects on acoustic parameters, it is advisable to validate the extraction method of acoustic variables from recordings over longer distances before using them in acoustic analyses
Sound properties associated with equiluminant colours
No full textThere is a widespread tendency to associate certain properties of sound with those of colour (e.g., higher pitches with lighter colours). Yet it is an open question how sound influences chroma or hue when properly controlling for lightness. To examine this, we asked participants to adjust physically equiluminant colours until they ‘went best’ with certain sounds. For pure tones, complex sine waves and vocal timbres, increases in frequency were associated with increases in chroma. Increasing the loudness of pure tones also increased chroma. Hue associations varied depending on the type of stimuli. In stimuli that involved only limited bands of frequencies (pure tones, vocal timbres), frequency correlated with hue, such that low frequencies gave blue hues and progressed to yellow hues at 800 Hz. Increasing the loudness of a pure tone was also associated with a shift from blue to yellow. However, for complex sounds that share the same bandwidth of frequencies (100–3200 Hz) but that vary in terms of which frequencies have the most power, all stimuli were associated with yellow hues. This suggests that the presence of high frequencies (above 800 Hz) consistently yields yellow hues. Overall we conclude that while pitch–chroma associations appear to flexibly re-apply themselves across a variety of contexts, frequencies above 800 Hz appear to produce yellow hues irrespective of context. These findings reveal new sound–colour correspondences previously obscured through not controlling for lightness. Findings are discussed in relation to understanding the underlying rules of cross-modal correspondences, synaesthesia, and optimising the sensory substitution of visual information through sound
Vocal communication between humans and animals
No full textIn this article, we review the scientific literature examining vocal communication between humans and other animals, with a focus on dog-human interactions, as these have recently received considerable attention from scientists.We discuss how vocal signals are produced in human and non-human mammals, arguing that vocal communication between different mammalian species is facilitated by commonalities in the production and perception of sound signals. Production mechanisms are described in the context of source-filter theory, and perceptual abilities in the context of motivational-structural rules.We then review the extent to which humans perceive and use the information content of animal vocal signals, finding that familiarity and phylogenetic relatedness are potential features for shared perception, but that cross-species communication appears possible even between unfamiliar and distantly related species. Domestication may have furthermore artificially selected for vocal signals that exploit human perceptual biases, thereby promoting cooperation between domesticated species and humans.Finally, we discuss animals’ abilities to assess information from both the nonverbal and verbal dimensions of human speech, also reviewing recent research on pet-directed speech, a specific voice register used by human speakers when addressing their pets. We report that many animals can decode information from human vocal signals including speaker traits, emotional and motivational states, and even phonemic or linguistic content
Roaring high and low: composition and possible functions of the Iberian stag's vocal repertoire
No full textWe provide a detailed description of the rutting vocalisations of free-ranging male Iberian deer (Cervus elaphus hispanicus, Hilzheimer 1909), a geographically isolated and morphologically differentiated subspecies of red deer Cervus elaphus. We combine spectrographic examinations, spectral analyses and automated classifications to identify different call types, and
compare the composition of the vocal repertoire with that of other red deer subspecies. Iberian stags give bouts of roars (and more rarely, short series of barks) that are typically composed of two different types of calls. Long Common Roars are mostly given at the beginning or at the end of the bout, and are characterised by a high fundamental frequency (F0) resulting in poorly defined formant frequencies but a relatively high amplitude. In contrast, Short Common Roars are typically given in the middle or at the end of the bout, and are characterised by a lower F0 resulting in relatively well defined vocal tract resonances, but low amplitude. While we did not identify entirely Harsh Roars (as described in the Scottish red
deer subspecies (Cervus elaphus scoticus), a small percentage of Long Common Roars contained segments of deterministic chaos. We suggest that the evolution of two clearly distinct types of Common Roars may reflect divergent selection pressures favouring either vocal efficiency in high pitched roars or the communication of body size in low-pitched, high spectral density roars highlighting vocal tract resonances. The clear divergence of the Iberian red deer vocal repertoire from those of other documented European red deer populations reinforces the status of this geographical variant as a distinct subspecies
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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