Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, University of Minnesota, Saint Paul, MN, 55108, USA.
J Comp Physiol A Neuroethol Sens Neural Behav Physiol. 2024 Nov;210(6):853-867. doi: 10.1007/s00359-024-01702-9. Epub 2024 May 11.
Auditory streaming underlies a receiver's ability to organize complex mixtures of auditory input into distinct perceptual "streams" that represent different sound sources in the environment. During auditory streaming, sounds produced by the same source are integrated through time into a single, coherent auditory stream that is perceptually segregated from other concurrent sounds. Based on human psychoacoustic studies, one hypothesis regarding auditory streaming is that any sufficiently salient perceptual difference may lead to stream segregation. Here, we used the eastern grey treefrog, Hyla versicolor, to test this hypothesis in the context of vocal communication in a non-human animal. In this system, females choose their mate based on perceiving species-specific features of a male's pulsatile advertisement calls in social environments (choruses) characterized by mixtures of overlapping vocalizations. We employed an experimental paradigm from human psychoacoustics to design interleaved pulsatile sequences (ABAB…) that mimicked key features of the species' advertisement call, and in which alternating pulses differed in pulse rise time, which is a robust species recognition cue in eastern grey treefrogs. Using phonotaxis assays, we found no evidence that perceptually salient differences in pulse rise time promoted the segregation of interleaved pulse sequences into distinct auditory streams. These results do not support the hypothesis that any perceptually salient acoustic difference can be exploited as a cue for stream segregation in all species. We discuss these findings in the context of cues used for species recognition and auditory streaming.
听觉流基础是接收者将复杂的听觉输入组织成不同的感知“流”的能力，这些“流”代表环境中的不同声源。在听觉流中，来自同一来源的声音会随着时间的推移整合到一个单一的、连贯的听觉流中，该听觉流与其他同时发出的声音在感知上是分离的。基于人类心理声学研究，关于听觉流的一个假设是，任何足够明显的感知差异都可能导致流的分离。在这里，我们使用东部灰树蛙（Hyla versicolor）在非人类动物的声音交流中测试了这一假设。在这个系统中，雌性根据在由重叠发声组成的混合社会环境（合唱）中感知雄性脉冲式广告叫声的物种特异性特征来选择配偶。我们采用了人类心理声学中的一个实验范式来设计交错的脉冲序列（ABAB…），模拟了该物种广告叫声的关键特征，其中交替的脉冲在脉冲上升时间上存在差异，这是东部灰树蛙中一个强大的物种识别线索。通过语音定向反应测试，我们没有发现证据表明在脉冲上升时间上存在明显的感知差异会促进交错脉冲序列的分离到不同的听觉流中。这些结果不支持任何明显的感知声学差异都可以被利用作为所有物种流分离的线索的假设。我们在物种识别和听觉流中使用的线索的背景下讨论了这些发现。
