Adding colour-realistic video images to audio playbacks increases stimulus engagement but does not enhance vocal learning in zebra finches.

ABSTRACT: Bird song and human speech are learned early in life and for both cases engagement with live social tutors generally leads to better learning outcomes than passive audio-only exposure. Real-world tutor-tutee relations are normally not uni- but multimodal and observations suggest that visual cues related to sound production might enhance vocal learning. We tested this hypothesis by pairing appropriate, colour-realistic, high frame-rate videos of a singing adult male zebra finch tutor with song playbacks and presenting these stimuli to juvenile zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata). Juveniles exposed to song playbacks combined with video presentation of a singing bird approached the stimulus more often and spent more time close to it than juveniles exposed to audio playback only or audio playb

SUBMITTER: Varkevisser JM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8940817 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature