Experience with speech sounds is not necessary for cue trading by budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus).

ABSTRACT: The influence of experience with human speech sounds on speech perception in budgerigars, vocal mimics whose speech exposure can be tightly controlled in a laboratory setting, was measured. Budgerigars were divided into groups that differed in auditory exposure and then tested on a cue-trading identification paradigm with synthetic speech. Phonetic cue trading is a perceptual phenomenon observed when changes on one cue dimension are offset by changes in another cue dimension while still maintaining the same phonetic percept. The current study examined whether budgerigars would trade the cues of voice onset time (VOT) and the first formant onset frequency when identifying syllable initial stop consonants and if this would be influenced by exposure to speech sounds. There were a total of fou

SUBMITTER: Flaherty M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5451017 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature