@article {4005, title = {Tracking silence: adjusting vocal production to avoid acoustic interference.}, journal = {Journal of Comparative Physiology. A, Neuroethology, Sensory, Neural, and Behavioral Physiology}, volume = {193}, year = {2007}, month = {2007 Apr}, pages = {477-83}, abstract = {

Organisms that use vocal signals to communicate often modulate their vocalizations to avoid being masked by other sounds in the environment. Although some environmental noise is continuous, both biotic and abiotic noise can be intermittent, or even periodic. Interference from intermittent noise can be avoided if calls are timed to coincide with periods of silence, a capacity that is unambiguously present in insects, amphibians, birds, and humans. Surprisingly, we know virtually nothing about this fundamental capacity in nonhuman primates. Here we show that a New World monkey, the cotton-top tamarin (Saguinus oedipus), can restrict calls to periodic silent intervals in loud white noise. In addition, calls produced during these silent intervals were significantly louder than calls recorded in silent baseline sessions. Finally, average call duration dropped across sessions, indicating that experience with temporally patterned noise caused tamarins to compress their calls. Taken together, these results show that in the presence of a predictable, intermittent environmental noise, cotton-top tamarins are able to modify the duration, timing, and amplitude of their calls to avoid acoustic interference.

}, keywords = {Adaptation, Animal, Animals, Auditory Perception, Auditory Threshold, Behavior, Environment, Feedback, Female, Male, Noise, Physiological, Saguinus, Vocalization}, issn = {0340-7594}, doi = {10.1007/s00359-006-0205-7}, author = {Egnor, S E Roian and Wickelgren, Jeanette Graham and Hauser, Marc D} } @article {4006, title = {Noise-induced vocal modulation in cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus).}, journal = {American Journal of Primatology}, volume = {68}, year = {2006}, month = {2006 Dec}, pages = {1183-90}, abstract = {

The Lombard effect-an increase in vocalization amplitude in response to an increase in background noise-is observed in a wide variety of animals. We investigated this basic form of vocal control in the cotton-top tamarin (Saguinus oedipus) by measuring the amplitude of a contact call, the combination long call (CLC), while simultaneously varying the background noise level. All subjects showed a significant increase in call amplitude and syllable duration in response to an increase in background noise amplitude. Together with prior results, this study shows that tamarins have greater vocal control in the context of auditory feedback perturbation than previously suspected.

}, keywords = {Animal, Animals, Female, Head, Male, Noise, Saguinus, Speech Acoustics, Vocalization}, issn = {0275-2565}, doi = {10.1002/ajp.20317}, author = {Egnor, S E Roian and Hauser, Marc D} } @article {4007, title = {Perturbation of auditory feedback causes systematic perturbation in vocal structure in adult cotton-top tamarins.}, journal = {The Journal of Experimental Biology}, volume = {209}, year = {2006}, month = {2006 Sep}, pages = {3652-63}, abstract = {

Auditory feedback is critical for the development and maintenance of speech in humans. In contrast, studies of nonhuman primate vocal production generally report that subjects show little reliance on auditory input. We examined the extent to which cotton-top tamarin (Saguinus oedipus) vocal production is sensitive to perturbation of auditory feedback by manipulating the predictability of presentation of a 1 s burst of white noise during the production of the species-specific contact call, the combination long call (CLC). We used three experimental conditions: the Begin condition, in which white noise was presented only during the first half of a recording session, the End condition, in which white noise was presented only in the last half, and the Random condition, in which each call had a 50\% probability of receiving white noise playback throughout the recording session, making the auditory feedback unpredictable. In addition we recorded calls before and after the experimental series (Baseline condition) to determine whether any changes induced by modification of auditory feedback persisted. Results showed that playback of white noise during the production of the CLC produced changes in the temporal structure of the CLC: calls were shorter and had fewer pulses, indicating that modification of auditory feedback can interrupt vocal production. In addition, calls that received modified feedback were louder and had longer inter-pulse intervals than those that did not, consistent with an adaptive response to the masking effect of white noise playback. The magnitude of this compensatory effect and the interruption rate were both sensitive to whether the feedback modification occurred at the beginning or end of the experimental session: early feedback produced less interruption and more compensation. Finally, when auditory feedback modification was unpredictable, adaptive changes were observed in both calls that received modified feedback and those that received normal feedback, suggesting that tamarins can generate an expectation of noise playback and increase vocal amplitude in anticipation of masking.

}, keywords = {Acoustic Stimulation, Adaptation, Animal, Animals, Female, Male, Perceptual Masking, Psychological, Saguinus, Vocalization}, issn = {0022-0949}, doi = {10.1242/jeb.02420}, author = {Egnor, S E Roian and Iguina, Carmen G and Hauser, Marc D} } @article {4008, title = {A paradox in the evolution of primate vocal learning.}, journal = {Trends in Neurosciences}, volume = {27}, year = {2004}, month = {2004 Nov}, pages = {649-54}, abstract = {

The importance of auditory feedback in the development of spoken language in humans is striking. Paradoxically, although auditory-feedback-dependent vocal plasticity has been shown in a variety of taxonomic groups, there is little evidence that our nearest relatives{\textendash}non-human primates{\textendash}require auditory feedback for the development of species-typical vocal signals. Because of the apparent lack of developmental plasticity in the vocal production system, neuroscientists have largely ignored the neural mechanisms of non-human primate vocal production and perception. Recently, the absence of evidence for vocal plasticity from developmental studies has been contrasted with evidence for vocal plasticity in adults. We argue that this new evidence makes non-human primate vocal behavior an attractive model system for neurobiological analysis.

}, keywords = {Acoustic Stimulation, Animal, Animals, Biological Evolution, Humans, Learning, Vocalization}, issn = {0166-2236}, doi = {10.1016/j.tins.2004.08.009}, author = {Egnor, S E Roian and Hauser, Marc D} }