Object Perception and Representation by Echolocating Dolphins

海豚回声定位的物体感知和表示

• 批准号: 0090744
• 负责人: Louis Herman
• 金额: $ 23.83万
• 依托单位: University of Hawaii
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2001
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2001-02-15 至 2004-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0090744&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Object; Perception; Representation; Echolocating; Dolphins

Object Perception and Representation by Echolocating DolphinsPrincipal Investigator: Louis M. Herman Ph.D.This research continues the investigation by this laboratory of the ability of the bottlenosed dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) to perceive the shape of objects through its echolocation sense. How does the dolphin represent objects it inspects through echolocation? Does it perceive only the raw echoes returning from ensonified objects or, like vision, does it directly perceive the shape of the object? The prior-published studies used a cross-modal matching-to-sample procedure to demonstrate that a dolphin could spontaneously recognize objects across the senses of echolocation and vision. The results suggested that object shape is directly perceived though the echolocation sense, and that the representations of objects obtained through echolocation are coordinated with or closely integrated with the representations obtained through vision. These conclusions strongly revise previous views of dolphin echolocation that postulated that discriminations among different objects were based on learning to associate the raw acoustic cues of returning echoes (e.g., amplitude, highlight structure, or spectral composition) with things seen or with reward received. The continuing investigations now ask how faithfully the dolphin's representations preserve the spatial structure of the object being ensonified, and what mechanisms can support the construction of a shape percept through echolocation. Other questions include whether the dolphin's perception of shape though echolocation is invariant with changes in the orientation of the object, with changes in material composition of the object, and with changes in object size. In each manipulation, object shape will remain constant, but the sound reflection properties of the object will vary. The cross-modal matching technique will continue to be used, as well as intra-modal techniques in which object recognition performance is examined within the senses of echolocation and vision rather than across the senses. The issues considered in these studies and the findings obtained establish links with issues and findings in object-based perception and in intersensory perception in infant and adult humans, and in nonhumans. The studies also make contact with general issues in memory and representation in human and nonhuman animals.

回声定位海豚对物体的感知和表征主要研究人员：Louis M.Herman博士本研究继续本实验室对瓶鼻海豚(Tursioptruncatus)通过其回声定位感官感知物体形状的能力的研究。海豚如何通过回声定位来表示它所检查的物体？它是只感知归化物体返回的原始回声，还是像视觉一样，直接感知物体的形状？之前发表的研究使用了跨模式匹配到样本的程序来证明海豚可以自发地识别回声定位和视觉上的物体。结果表明，回声定位可以直观地感知物体的形状，回声定位获得的物体表征与视觉表征是协调的或紧密结合的。这些结论强烈地修正了以前关于海豚回声定位的观点，即不同物体之间的区分是基于学习将返回回声的原始声学线索(例如，幅度、亮点结构或光谱组成)与所看到的事物或所获得的奖励相关联。现在仍在继续的研究询问海豚的表征如何忠实地保留了被赋予灵化的物体的空间结构，以及什么机制可以支持通过回声定位来构建形状感知。其他问题包括海豚通过回声定位对形状的感知是否随着物体方位的变化、物体材料组成的变化以及物体大小的变化而不变。在每个操作中，对象形状将保持不变，但对象的声音反射属性将变化。将继续使用跨模式匹配技术以及模式内技术，在这些技术中，对象识别性能是在回声定位和视觉感官而不是跨感官来检查的。这些研究中考虑的问题和获得的结果与婴儿和成人以及非人类的基于对象的知觉和感觉间知觉的问题和发现建立了联系。这些研究还联系到人类和非人类动物的记忆和表征的一般问题。