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这项研究和另一个项目(Z01 HD001123-12)研究了灵长类动物的听觉交流。这些研究的总体目标是从发育、神经机制、内分泌因素和社会背景等方面全面了解灵长类听觉交流。两个物种，松鼠猴和普通的绒猴，是主要的研究对象，并在适当的时候从其他物种收集额外的数据。本项目从生物声学和行为学的角度研究灵长类动物的交流，侧重于自然环境中发声的详细声学结构，以及结构差异与年龄、性别、经验和反应选择性差异的关系，以及社会背景和遗传背景等更广泛的因素。新的发现集中在听觉交流的知觉方面，使用回放技术来检查通过声音对刺激的反应来衡量的知觉偏好。主要由成年雌性松鼠猴子Chuck发出的近距离联系发声，根据声音对听者的熟悉程度(由于单个发声器Chuck的声学细节)进行了反应性测试。从测试组记录下来的Chuck被数字化，然后原封不动地呈现出来，去掉了一个被称为“旗帜”的调频成分，或者将另一个人(来自另一个社会群体)的旗帜电子拼接到一个Chuck上，而不是那个发声的自然出现的旗帜。完好无损的卡盘对去掉国旗的卡盘或拼接了陌生旗帜的卡盘的反应明显多于同一卡盘。这些结果表明，旗帜是女性使用的一个重要的声学特征，用来确定她们是否对这种形式的对话交流做出口头回应。 为了测试旗帜中的声学信息是否足以在统计上区分发声者，几个旗帜参数(如旗帜持续时间、峰值频率等)进行测量，并将这些值输入判别分析。结果表明，单凭旗帜参数就足以将一个社会群体中的发声者区分开来。

This and a companion project (Z01 HD001123-12) investigate auditory communication in primates. The overall goal of these studies is to provide a comprehensive understanding of primate auditory communication in terms of development, neural mechanisms, endocrine factors, and social context. Two species, the squirrel monkey and the common marmoset, are the main subjects of study, with additional data collected from other species where appropriate. The present project studies primate communication from a bioacoustic and ethological perspective, focusing on the detailed acoustic structure of vocalizations produced in natural settings, and the relationship of structural differences to differences in age, gender, experience and response selectivity, as well as the broader factors of social context and genetic background. New findings focused on the perceptual side of auditory communication, using playback techniques to examine perceptual preferences as measured by vocally responding to the stimulus. A close-range affiliative vocalization given mainly by adult female squirrel monkeys, the chuck, was tested for responsiveness based on the familiarity of the sound (due to the acoustic details of the chucks of individual vocalizers) to the listener. Chucks recorded from the test group were digitized, then either presented intact, with a frequency-modulated component referred to as a 'flag' removed, or with the flag of another individual (from another social group) electronically spliced onto a chuck instead of the naturally occurring flag for that vocalization. Intact chucks were responded to significantly more than the same chuck with the flag removed, or to chucks with unfamiliar flags spliced onto them. These results suggest that the flag is an important acoustic feature used by females to determine whether they vocally respond to this form of conversational communication. To test whether the acoustic information in flags was sufficient to statistically separate vocalizers, several flag parameters (such as flag duration, peak frequency, etc.) were measured and the values entered into a discriminant analysis. The results indicated that flag parameters alone were sufficient to separate the chucks of vocalizers in a social group.