Dissertation Research: The Social Functions of Vocal Communication

论文研究：声音交流的社会功能

• 批准号: 9321211
• 负责人: Peter Rodman
• 金额: $ 0.97万
• 依托单位: University of California-Davis
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1994
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1994-04-15 至 1995-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9321211&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Dissertation; Research; Social; Functions; Vocal

9321211 Rodman Animal vocalizations (growls, screeches, grunts, and so forth) have been studied by scientists from two perspectives - 1) regarding them as manifestations of emotional arousal of an animal that at best convey a notion of what the animal might do, and 2) seeing them as communicating specific information about 'objects' in the environment, and hence functionally equivalent to some human words (warning calls, "here's the food", etc.). Virtually absent, however, has been the consideration of vocalizations as functioning to communicate information about the identity of the animal, or what linguists refer to as the indexical function of language. It is clear that non-vocal identifiers are important, such as olfactory cues. For primates, however, except for long-distance chimpanzee calls, there has been very little study in this area. This 14 month field study will investigate the ability of rhesus macaques to recognize each other's vocalizations on the island of Cayo Santiago, Puerto Rico. The research is designed to test explicit hypotheses concerning the presence and nature of unique vocal 'signatures', and the level at whcih they facilitate vocal recognition of group members. The results of this study will contribute to an understanding of the social functions of primate vocal communication. They will also yield insight into the cognitive processes by which primates recognize conspecifics and group them into meaningful social categories that can guide behavioral decision-making. ***

9321211罗德曼动物的发声(咆哮、尖叫、咕噜声等等)已经被科学家从两个角度进行了研究--1)将它们视为动物情绪唤醒的表现，充其量传达了动物可能做的事情的概念；2)将它们视为传达关于环境中“物体”的特定信息，因此在功能上等同于一些人类的话语(警告呼唤，“食物来了”等)。然而，几乎没有人考虑发声是为了传达关于动物身份的信息，或者语言学家所说的语言的索引功能。很明显，非语音识别符很重要，比如嗅觉提示。然而，对于灵长类动物，除了黑猩猩的长途呼叫之外，这方面的研究很少。这项为期14个月的实地研究将在波多黎各的卡约圣地亚哥岛上调查恒河猴识别彼此发音的能力。这项研究旨在测试明确的假设，这些假设涉及独特的声音“特征”的存在和性质，以及它们在多大程度上促进了对群体成员的声音识别。本研究的结果将有助于理解灵长类动物语音交流的社会功能。他们还将深入了解灵长类识别同类特征的认知过程，并将它们归类为有意义的社会类别，以指导行为决策。***