Dip listening and the cocktail party problem in grey treefrogs: Signal recognition in temporally fluctuating noise.

ABSTRACT: Dip listening refers to our ability to catch brief "acoustic glimpses" of speech and other sounds when fluctuating background noise levels momentarily decrease. Exploiting dips in natural fluctuations of noise contributes to our ability to overcome the "cocktail party problem" of understanding speech in multi-talker social environments. We presently know little about how nonhuman animals solve analogous communication problems. Here, we asked whether female grey treefrogs (Hyla chrysoscelis) might benefit from dip listening in selecting a mate in the noisy social setting of a breeding chorus. Consistent with a dip listening hypothesis, subjects recognized conspecific calls at lower thresholds when the dips in a chorus-like noise masker were long enough to allow glimpses of nine or more cons

SUBMITTER: Velez A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3290330 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature