Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, University of Minnesota, 100 Ecology, 1987 Upper Buford Circle, St. Paul, MN 55108, USA.
Int J Psychophysiol. 2015 Feb;95(2):216-37. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2014.01.004. Epub 2014 Jan 11.
The perceptual analysis of acoustic scenes involves binding together sounds from the same source and separating them from other sounds in the environment. In large social groups, listeners experience increased difficulty performing these tasks due to high noise levels and interference from the concurrent signals of multiple individuals. While a substantial body of literature on these issues pertains to human hearing and speech communication, few studies have investigated how nonhuman animals may be evolutionarily adapted to solve biologically analogous communication problems. Here, I review recent and ongoing work aimed at testing hypotheses about perceptual mechanisms that enable treefrogs in the genus Hyla to communicate vocally in noisy, multi-source social environments. After briefly introducing the genus and the methods used to study hearing in frogs, I outline several functional constraints on communication posed by the acoustic environment of breeding "choruses". Then, I review studies of sound source perception aimed at uncovering how treefrog listeners may be adapted to cope with these constraints. Specifically, this review covers research on the acoustic cues used in sequential and simultaneous auditory grouping, spatial release from masking, and dip listening. Throughout the paper, I attempt to illustrate how broad-scale, comparative studies of carefully considered animal models may ultimately reveal an evolutionary diversity of underlying mechanisms for solving cocktail-party-like problems in communication.
听觉场景的感知分析涉及将来自同一声源的声音组合在一起，并将它们与环境中的其他声音分开。在大型社会群体中，由于噪声水平高以及来自多个个体的并发信号干扰，听众在执行这些任务时会遇到更大的困难。虽然关于这些问题的大量文献涉及人类听力和言语交流，但很少有研究调查非人类动物如何可能通过进化适应来解决生物上类似的通信问题。在这里，我回顾了最近和正在进行的工作，旨在测试关于使树蛙属中的树蛙能够在嘈杂的多声源社会环境中进行发声交流的感知机制的假说。在简要介绍了该属以及用于研究青蛙听力的方法之后，我概述了繁殖“合唱”声环境对通信提出的几个功能约束。然后，我回顾了声源感知的研究，旨在揭示树蛙听众如何适应这些约束。具体来说，本综述涵盖了用于顺序和同时听觉分组、掩蔽释放、和双耳聆听的声学线索的研究。在整篇文章中，我试图说明如何通过对经过精心考虑的动物模型进行广泛的比较研究，最终揭示出解决交际中的鸡尾酒会问题的潜在机制的进化多样性。
