Collaborative Research: Multimodal Communication, mate choice and predation risk

我们通过多种感官(即感官通道)接收和分析来自环境的信息。例如，当我们进行社交互动时，我们不仅会听别人说S的话，还会阅读他们的肢体语言来解读他们的意思。但是，来自不同感官渠道的信息如何相互作用来影响我们的社会决策呢？在这一系列研究中，声音和视觉线索如何影响配偶选择决定将在túngara蛙身上确定。像大多数青蛙一样，汤加拉青蛙用响亮而明显的交配叫声为求偶做广告。雌性比较雄性之间的交配叫声，并使用这一信息来选择配偶。但女？S的决定也受到了视觉提示的影响，男？S的声囊又大又显眼。通过使用机器青蛙，研究表明，与发出相同叫声但没有动态声囊的雄性青蛙相比，雌性青蛙更喜欢具有巨大充气和排气声囊的呼唤雄蛙。为了在这些结果的基础上解决关于听觉和视觉线索如何相互作用影响女性决策的几个基本问题，将确定以下几个问题：听觉和视觉线索的相对价值是什么？视觉线索的增加会影响女性吗？S对叫声的记忆吗？视觉线索是否有助于识别大合唱中的男性个体？视觉提示的增加会影响女性做出决定的时间吗？所有这些研究都将为包括人类在内的动物如何通过不同的感官渠道整合周围环境的信息提供洞察力。在这项工作的过程中，大约25名学生，其中许多是妇女和少数民族，将接受使用机器人技术研究行为的培训。

We receive and analyze information from our environment through multiple senses (i.e. sensory channels). When we interact socially, for example, we not only listen to someone?s words but we also read their body language to interpret their meaning. But how does information from different sensory channels interact to influence our social decisions? In this series of studies how acoustic and visual cues influence mate choice decisions will be determined in the túngara frog. As do most frogs, túngara frogs advertise for mates with loud and conspicuous mating calls. Females compare mating calls among males and use this information to choose a mate. But the female?s decision is also influenced by the presence of a visual cue, the male?s large and conspicuous vocal sac. Using robotic frogs it has been shown that females prefer a calling male with a large inflating-deflating vocal sac to a male producing the same call but without a dynamic vocal sac. To build upon those results to address several fundamental questions about how acoustic and visual cues interact to influence female decision making the following will be determined: What is the relative value of acoustic and visual cues? Does the addition of visual cues influence a female?s memory of calls? Do visual cues aid in recognizing individual males in large choruses? Does the addition of a visual cue influence the time it takes for females to make decisions? All of these studies will provide insights into how animals, including humans, integrate information in the environment around them through different sensory channels. In the process of this work, approximately 25 students, many of them women and minorities, will be trained in the use of robotic technologies to study behavior.