Nonlinear vocal phenomena affect human perceptions of distress, size and dominance in puppy whines
Massenet, Mathilde ; Anikin, Andrey LU
; Pisanski, Katarzyna
; Reynaud, Karine
; Mathevon, Nicolas
and Reby, David
(2022)
In Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
289(1973).
p.1-9
- Abstract
- While nonlinear phenomena (NLP) are widely reported in animal vocalizations, often causing perceptual harshness and roughness, their communicative function remains debated. Several hypotheses have been put forward: attention-grabbing, communication of distress, exaggeration of body size and dominance. Here, we use state-of-the-art sound synthesis to investigate how NLP affect the perception of puppy whines by human listeners. Listeners assessed the distress, size or dominance conveyed by synthetic puppy whines with manipulated NLP, including frequency jumps and varying proportions of subharmonics, sidebands and deterministic chaos. We found that the presence of chaos increased the puppy's perceived level of distress and that this effect... (More)
- While nonlinear phenomena (NLP) are widely reported in animal vocalizations, often causing perceptual harshness and roughness, their communicative function remains debated. Several hypotheses have been put forward: attention-grabbing, communication of distress, exaggeration of body size and dominance. Here, we use state-of-the-art sound synthesis to investigate how NLP affect the perception of puppy whines by human listeners. Listeners assessed the distress, size or dominance conveyed by synthetic puppy whines with manipulated NLP, including frequency jumps and varying proportions of subharmonics, sidebands and deterministic chaos. We found that the presence of chaos increased the puppy's perceived level of distress and that this effect held across a range of representative fundamental frequency (fo) levels. Adding sidebands and subharmonics also increased perceived distress among listeners who have extensive caregiving experience with pre-weaned puppies (e.g. breeders, veterinarians). Finally, we found that whines with added chaos, subharmonics or sidebands were associated with larger and more dominant puppies, although these biases were attenuated in experienced caregivers. Together, our results show that nonlinear phenomena in puppy whines can convey rich information to human listeners and therefore may be crucial for offspring survival during breeding of a domesticated species. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/56f452d2-04e9-4cac-b2e6-4e5fd561a35d
- author
- Massenet, Mathilde
; Anikin, Andrey
LU
; Pisanski, Katarzyna
; Reynaud, Karine
; Mathevon, Nicolas
and Reby, David
- organization
- publishing date
- 2022
- type
- Contribution to journal
- publication status
- published
- subject
- in
- Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
- volume
- 289
- issue
- 1973
- article number
- 20220429
- pages
- 9 pages
- publisher
- Royal Society Publishing
- external identifiers
-
- scopus:85128980260
- pmid:35473375
- ISSN
- 1471-2954
- DOI
- 10.1098/rspb.2022.0429
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- 56f452d2-04e9-4cac-b2e6-4e5fd561a35d
- date added to LUP
- 2022-04-30 20:48:10
- date last changed
- 2022-07-02 03:00:11
@article{56f452d2-04e9-4cac-b2e6-4e5fd561a35d,
abstract = {{While nonlinear phenomena (NLP) are widely reported in animal vocalizations, often causing perceptual harshness and roughness, their communicative function remains debated. Several hypotheses have been put forward: attention-grabbing, communication of distress, exaggeration of body size and dominance. Here, we use state-of-the-art sound synthesis to investigate how NLP affect the perception of puppy whines by human listeners. Listeners assessed the distress, size or dominance conveyed by synthetic puppy whines with manipulated NLP, including frequency jumps and varying proportions of subharmonics, sidebands and deterministic chaos. We found that the presence of chaos increased the puppy's perceived level of distress and that this effect held across a range of representative fundamental frequency (fo) levels. Adding sidebands and subharmonics also increased perceived distress among listeners who have extensive caregiving experience with pre-weaned puppies (e.g. breeders, veterinarians). Finally, we found that whines with added chaos, subharmonics or sidebands were associated with larger and more dominant puppies, although these biases were attenuated in experienced caregivers. Together, our results show that nonlinear phenomena in puppy whines can convey rich information to human listeners and therefore may be crucial for offspring survival during breeding of a domesticated species.}},
author = {{Massenet, Mathilde and Anikin, Andrey and Pisanski, Katarzyna and Reynaud, Karine and Mathevon, Nicolas and Reby, David}},
issn = {{1471-2954}},
language = {{eng}},
number = {{1973}},
pages = {{1--9}},
publisher = {{Royal Society Publishing}},
series = {{Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences}},
title = {{Nonlinear vocal phenomena affect human perceptions of distress, size and dominance in puppy whines}},
url = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2022.0429}},
doi = {{10.1098/rspb.2022.0429}},
volume = {{289}},
year = {{2022}},
}