Psychology Department, University of Maryland, 4094 Campus Drive, College Park, MD 20742, USA.
Neuroscience and Cognitive Science Program, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2020 Jan 6;375(1789):20190044. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2019.0044. Epub 2019 Nov 18.
The complex and melodic nature of many birds' songs has raised interest in potential parallels between avian vocal sequences and human speech. The similarities between birdsong and speech in production and learning are well established, but surprisingly little is known about how birds perceive song sequences. One popular laboratory songbird, the zebra finch (), has recently attracted attention as an avian model for human speech, in part because the male learns to produce the individual elements in its song motif in a fixed sequence. But psychoacoustic evidence shows that adult zebra finches are relatively insensitive to the sequential features of song syllables. Instead, zebra finches and other birds seem to be exquisitely sensitive to the acoustic details of individual syllables to a degree that is beyond human hearing capacity. Based on these findings, we present a finite-state model of zebra finch perception of song syllable sequences and discuss the rich informational capacity of their vocal system. Furthermore, we highlight the abilities of budgerigars (), a parrot species, to hear sequential features better than zebra finches and suggest that neurophysiological investigations comparing these species could prove fruitful for uncovering neural mechanisms for auditory sequence perception in human speech. This article is part of the theme issue 'What can animal communication teach us about human language?'
鸟类歌曲的复杂和旋律性质引起了人们对鸟类声乐序列与人类言语之间可能存在相似性的兴趣。鸟类歌唱和言语在产生和学习方面的相似性已得到充分证实，但令人惊讶的是，人们对鸟类如何感知歌曲序列知之甚少。一种受欢迎的实验室鸣禽，斑胸草雀（），最近因其作为人类言语的鸟类模型而受到关注，部分原因是雄性学会以固定的顺序产生其歌曲主题中的各个元素。但心理声学证据表明，成年斑胸草雀对歌曲音节的序列特征相对不敏感。相反，斑胸草雀和其他鸟类似乎对单个音节的声学细节极其敏感，其敏感程度超出了人类的听力能力。基于这些发现，我们提出了一个斑胸草雀感知歌曲音节序列的有限状态模型，并讨论了其声乐系统的丰富信息容量。此外，我们强调了虎皮鹦鹉（），一种鹦鹉物种，比斑胸草雀更好地感知序列特征的能力，并表明比较这些物种的神经生理学研究可能有助于揭示人类言语中听觉序列感知的神经机制。本文是主题为“动物交流能教会我们什么是人类语言？”的一部分。
