CAREER: The Receiver Psychology of Acoustic Communication Networks

该奖项是根据2009年《美国复苏和再投资法案》(公法111-5)资助的。在人类和其他动物中，声音通信通常在由多个信号者和接收者组成的大型社会团体或“网络”中进行。在这样的环境中，同时发出信号的个体产生的背景噪声可能会削弱或“掩盖”预期接收者对信号的感知。听觉掩蔽反过来又会导致交流错误。在人类中，这样的错误通常会导致在嘈杂的社交环境中对言语的误解。该项目测试了一种假设，即接收者拥有心理机制，通过利用噪声本身的可预测特征来改善掩蔽噪声的负面影响。这一假设将以青蛙交流为模型进行验证。在繁殖季节，雄性青蛙齐声合唱，发出响亮的广告号召来吸引雌性青蛙。该项目的目标是了解雌性青蛙如何利用合唱噪音的声学特征(I)更好地识别自己物种的交配叫声，(Ii)区分自己物种和不同物种的叫声，以及(Iii)区分自己物种中偏好和非偏好的雄性。该项目整合了动物行为和听力研究的现有范式，并可能改变接受者心理和通信网络研究为人类听力、言语感知和听神经科学研究提供信息的方式。更广泛地说，该项目将通过在自然历史博物馆开发一个新的关于青蛙的多媒体展览和让公民科学家参与原始数据的收集，让公众参与科学研究和发现的过程。该项目还将通过开发新的基于项目的学习练习、丰富写作的课程以及培训来自多个科学代表性不足群体的研究生来加强本科生和研究生教育。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).In humans and other animals, acoustic communication often takes place in large social groups or "networks" comprising multiple signalers and receivers. In such environments, the background noise generated by simultaneously signaling individuals can impair or "mask" the perception of signals by intended receivers. Auditory masking, in turn, can lead to communication errors. In humans, such errors commonly lead to the misunderstanding of speech in noisy social settings. This project tests the hypothesis that receivers possess psychological mechanisms that function to ameliorate the negative impacts of masking noise by exploiting predictable features of the noise itself. This hypothesis will be tested using frog communication as a model. During their breeding season, male frogs aggregate in choruses and produce loud advertisement calls to attract females. The objectives of the project are to understand how female frogs exploit acoustic features of the noise of a chorus (i) to better recognize the mating calls of their own species, (ii) to discriminate among the calls of their own species and different species, and (iii) to discriminate between preferred and non-preferred males of their own species. The project integrates current paradigms in animal behavior and hearing research and could transform the way research on receiver psychology and communication networks informs the study of human hearing, speech perception, and auditory neuroscience. More broadly, the project will engage the public in the process of scientific inquiry and discovery through the development of a new multi-media exhibit on frogs at a natural history museum and the involvement of citizen scientists in the collection of raw data. The project will also enhance undergraduate and graduate education by developing new project-based learning exercises, a writing-enriched curriculum, and by training graduate students from multiple underrepresented groups in science.