Communication and Behavior of Baboons

狒狒的交流和行为

• 批准号: 9514001
• 负责人: Dorothy Cheney
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Pennsylvania
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing grant
• 财政年份: 1996
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1996-03-01 至 2001-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9514001&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Communication; Behavior; Baboons

Abstract 9514001 Cheney The goal of this research is a better understanding of the vocal communication and social behavior of freeranging nonhuman primates. Focus will be on vocal communication for a variety of reasons: first, because of its potential relation to studies of language and cognition in humans; second, because vocalizations lend themselves to quantitative signal analysis and to experimental tests of specific hypotheses. Finally, prior research has shown that playback experiments can be used to test hypotheses not only about vocal communication per se but also about the cognitive mechanisms that underlie complex social interactions. Subjects are free-ranging baboons (Papio cynocephalus ursinus) living in the Okavango Delta, Botswana. Animals in the study population are fully habituated to human observers, are recognized as individuals, and have known reproductive histories. The proposal has five inter-related components. The first component of this proposal focuses on the use of vocalizations in reconciliation. After aggression, female baboons sometimes 'reconcile' by grunting to their lower-ranking opponents. Previous experiments have shown that these grunts function at least in part to reduce former victims' anxiety. A second component focuses on the acoustic structure and possible semantic content of grunts. Baboons appear to use acoustically different grunts in different social situations. The PIs plan a series of observations and experiments are planned to determine whether acoustically different grunt types designate specifically different information to baboons. A third component focuses on contact barks that appear to be exchanged between mothers and infants when they become separated in wooded areas. If these experiments indicate that mothers give contact barks primarily with respect to their own (rather than their infants') location, then they will add to a growing body of evidence suggesting that nonhuman primates do not call with the intent of providing inform ation to others. A fourth component focuses on the view that pair bonds are formed in response to the threat of infanticide by recent immigrant males. These experiments, however, are incomplete, largely because they must be conducted opportunistically during the weeks after a new, potentially infanticidal male has joined the group. A fourth goal of the research will be to complete these experiments. The final component focuses on the perception of cause-effect relations by nonhuman primates. Humans readily distinguish between two events that occur together because one caused the other and two events that occur together purely by association. Most research conducted to date suggests that monkeys do not apply causal reasoning when manipulating tools, though language-trained apes perform markedly better on similar experiments. Previous experiments conducted with this group of baboons, however, suggest that monkeys' ability to perceive cause-effect relations in the domain of social interactions may be quite well developed. Female baboons respond significantly more strongly to playbacks of vocal sequences that are causally anomalous than to those that are not. To investigate this question further, a series of experiments is proposed that make explicit predictions about both the strength and the timing of subjects' responses to particular call sequences. ***

摘要 9514001切尼 这项研究的目的是更好地了解自由迁徙的非人类灵长类动物的声音交流和社会行为。重点将放在语音通信的各种原因：第一，因为它的潜在关系，在人类的语言和认知的研究;第二，因为发声借给自己的定量信号分析和实验测试的具体假设。最后，先前的研究表明，回放实验不仅可以用来测试语音通信本身的假设，而且还可以测试复杂的社会互动背后的认知机制。受试者是生活在博茨瓦纳奥卡万戈三角洲的自由放养狒狒（Papio cynocephalus ursinus）。研究群体中的动物完全习惯于人类观察者，被视为个体，并且具有已知的生殖史。该提案有五个相互关联的组成部分。 该建议的第一部分侧重于在和解中使用发声。在攻击之后，雌性狒狒有时会通过对地位较低的对手发出咕噜声来“和解”。先前的实验表明，这些咕噜声至少在一定程度上减轻了前受害者的焦虑。 第二部分着重于咕噜声的声学结构和可能的语义内容。狒狒似乎在不同的社交场合使用不同的声音。PI计划进行一系列的观察和实验，以确定声学上不同的咕噜声类型是否向狒狒指定了特定的不同信息。 第三个组成部分集中在接触树皮，似乎是交换之间的母亲和婴儿时，他们成为分离的树木繁茂的地区。如果这些实验表明，母亲发出的联系性吠叫主要是关于自己（而不是婴儿）的位置，那么他们将增加越来越多的证据表明，非人类灵长类动物不会以向他人提供信息的意图来呼唤。 第四个组成部分的重点是认为，对债券的形成，以应对威胁的杀害最近的移民男性。然而，这些实验是不完整的，主要是因为它们必须在一只新的、可能杀婴的雄性加入该群体后的几周内机会主义地进行。研究的第四个目标是完成这些实验。 最后一部分集中在感知的因果关系的非人类灵长类动物。人类很容易区分两个同时发生的事件，因为一个事件引起另一个事件，而两个事件纯粹是通过关联一起发生的。迄今为止的大多数研究表明，猴子在操作工具时不会运用因果推理，尽管受过语言训练的猿在类似的实验中表现得更好。然而，先前对这组狒狒进行的实验表明，猴子在社会互动领域感知因果关系的能力可能已经相当发达。雌性狒狒的反应显着更强烈的回放的声音序列是因果关系异常比那些没有。为了进一步研究这个问题，提出了一系列的实验，明确预测的强度和时间的主题的反应，以特定的呼叫序列。 ***