PERCEPTION OF SYNTHETIC L-BAR-BA-VERTICAL-BAR-VERTICAL-BAR-WA-VERTICAL-BAR SPEECH CONTINUUM BY BUDGERIGARS (MELOPSITTACUS-UNDULATUS)

Citation
Ml. Dent et al., PERCEPTION OF SYNTHETIC L-BAR-BA-VERTICAL-BAR-VERTICAL-BAR-WA-VERTICAL-BAR SPEECH CONTINUUM BY BUDGERIGARS (MELOPSITTACUS-UNDULATUS), The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 102(3), 1997, pp. 1891-1897
Citations number
57
Categorie Soggetti
Acoustics
ISSN journal
00014966
Volume
102
Issue
3
Year of publication
1997
Pages
1891 - 1897
Database
ISI
SICI code
0001-4966(1997)102:3<1891:POSL>2.0.ZU;2-6
Abstract
Other than humans, extensive vocal learning has only been widely demon strated in birds. Moreover, there are only a handful of avian species that are known to be good mimics of human speech. One such species is the budgerigar (Melopsittacus undulatus), which is a popular mimic of human speech and learns new vocalizations throughout adult life. Using operant conditioning procedures with a repeating background task, we tested budgerigars on the discrimination of tokens from two synthetic /ba/-/wa/ speech continua that differed in syllable, but not transitio n, duration. Budgerigars showed a significant improvement in discrimin ation performance on both continua near the phonetic boundary for huma ns. Budgerigars also showed a shift in the location of the phonetic bo undary with a change in syllable length, similar to what has been desc ribed for humans and other primates. These results on a nonmammalian s pecies provide support for the operation of a general, nonphonetic, au ditory process as one mechanism which can lead to the well-known stimu lus-length effect in humans. (C) 1997 Acoustical Society of America.