Dissertation Research: The Social Functions of Vocal Communication

小行星9321211 动物发声科学家们从两个角度研究了动物的声音（咆哮、尖叫、呼噜声等）：1）将它们视为动物情绪激动的表现，最多传达动物可能会做什么的概念; 2）将它们视为传达有关环境中“物体”的特定信息，因此功能等同于一些人类词汇（警告电话，“这是食物”等）。 然而，几乎没有人认为发声是为了传达关于动物身份的信息，或者是语言学家所说的语言的索引功能。 很明显，非声音的标识符是重要的，如嗅觉线索。 然而，对于灵长类动物来说，除了黑猩猩的长距离叫声，这方面的研究很少。 这项为期14个月的实地研究将调查波多黎各圣地亚哥岛上恒河猴识别彼此发声的能力。 该研究旨在测试明确的假设，关于存在和独特的声乐“签名”的性质，以及在whcih水平，他们促进语音识别的群体成员。 本研究的结果将有助于理解灵长类动物声音交流的社会功能。 他们还将深入了解灵长类动物识别同种动物的认知过程，并将它们归类为有意义的社会类别，这些类别可以指导行为决策。 ***

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. ***