Dataset Information

Territorial raven pairs are sensitive to structural changes in simulated acoustic displays of conspecifics.

ABSTRACT: Human language involves combining items into meaningful, syntactically structured wholes. The evolutionary origin of syntactic abilities has been investigated by testing pattern perception capacities in nonhuman animals. New World primates can respond spontaneously to structural changes in acoustic sequences and songbirds can learn to discriminate between various patterns in operant tasks. However, there is no conclusive evidence that songbirds respond spontaneously to structural changes in patterns without reinforcement or training. In this study, we tested pattern perception capacities of common ravens, Corvus corax, in a habituation-discrimination playback experiment. To enhance stimulus salience, call recordings of male and female ravens were used as acoustic elements, combined to create artificial territorial displays as target patterns. We habituated captive territorial raven pairs to displays following a particular pattern and subsequently exposed them to several test and control playbacks. Subjects spent more time visually orienting towards the loudspeaker in the discrimination phase when they heard structurally novel call combinations, violating the pattern presented during habituation. This demonstrates that songbirds, much like primates, can be sensitive to structural changes in auditory patterns and respond to them spontaneously, without training.

SUBMITTER: Reber SA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4907634 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Territorial raven pairs are sensitive to structural changes in simulated acoustic displays of conspecifics.

Reber Stephan A SA Boeckle Markus M Szipl Georgine G Janisch Judith J Bugnyar Thomas T Fitch W Tecumseh WT

Animal behaviour 20160601

Human language involves combining items into meaningful, syntactically structured wholes. The evolutionary origin of syntactic abilities has been investigated by testing pattern perception capacities in nonhuman animals. New World primates can respond spontaneously to structural changes in acoustic sequences and songbirds can learn to discriminate between various patterns in operant tasks. However, there is no conclusive evidence that songbirds respond spontaneously to structural changes in patt ...[more]

PMID: 27346889

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Project description:Large display environments are highly suitable for immersive analytics. They provide enough space for effective co-located collaboration and allow users to immerse themselves in the data. To provide the best setting-in terms of visualization and interaction-for the collaborative analysis of a real-world task, we have to understand the group dynamics during the work on large displays. Among other things, we have to study, what effects different task conditions will have on user behavior. In this paper, we investigated the effects of task conditions on group behavior regarding collaborative coupling and territoriality during co-located collaboration on a wall-sized display. For that, we designed two tasks: a task that resembles the information foraging loop and a task that resembles the connecting facts activity. Both tasks represent essential sub-processes of the sensemaking process in visual analytics and cause distinct space/display usage conditions. The information foraging activity requires the user to work with individual data elements to look into details. Here, the users predominantly occupy only a small portion of the display. In contrast, the connecting facts activity requires the user to work with the entire information space. Therefore, the user has to overview the entire display. We observed 12 groups for an average of 2 h each and gathered qualitative data and quantitative data in the form of surveys, field notes, video recordings, tracking data, and system logs. During data analysis, we focused specifically on participants' collaborative coupling (in particular, collaboration tightness, coupling styles, user roles, and task subdivision strategies) and territorial behavior. Our results both confirm and extend findings from the previous tabletop and wall-sized display studies. We could detect that participants tended to subdivide the task to approach it, in their opinion, in a more effective way, in parallel. We describe the subdivision strategies for both task conditions. We also detected and described multiple user roles, as well as a new coupling style that does not fit in either category: loosely or tightly. Moreover, we could observe a territory type that has not been mentioned previously in research. In our opinion, this territory type can affect the collaboration process of groups with more than two collaborators negatively. Finally, we investigated critical display regions in terms of ergonomics. We could detect that users perceived some regions as less comfortable for long-time work. The findings can be valuable for groupware interface design and development of group behavior models for analytical reasoning and decision making.

Dataset Information

Territorial raven pairs are sensitive to structural changes in simulated acoustic displays of conspecifics.

Publications

Territorial raven pairs are sensitive to structural changes in simulated acoustic displays of conspecifics.

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