Rhesus macaques spontaneously perceive formants in conspecific vocalizations

摘要: We provide a direct demonstration that nonhuman primates spontaneously perceive changes in formant frequencies their own species-typical vocalizations, without training or reinforcement. Formants are vocal tract resonances leading to distinctive spectral prominences the signal, and acoustic determinant of many key phonetic distinctions human languages. developed algorithms for manipulating formants rhesus macaque calls. Using resulting computer-manipulated calls habituation/dishabituation paradigm, with blind video scoring, we show macaques respond change within normal range. Lack dishabituation “synthetic replica” signal demonstrates was not due an artificial quality synthetic calls, but shift itself. These results indicate perception, significant component voice speech is perceptual ability shared other primates.