Carter, C., & Greening, L. Auditory stimulation of the stabled equine; the effect of different music genres on behaviour.
Abstract: Having a radio playing during the daytime at some equine establishments is common practice, but few studies have investigated whether particular music genres could be enriching for stabled horses or whether they may be perceived as aversive. This study aimed to establish whether behavioural responses differed when exposed to musical genres (Classical, Country, Jazz and Rock) and when compared to a control (no music). Eight Thoroughbred geldings (age range 8-10 years, average 8.9 years) were exposed to four musical environments and the control environment (no music) and observed in their usual stable, using instantaneous focal sampling every thirty seconds according to a pre-determined ethogram. Each horse was exposed to each genre for an hour in total, at a time when there was no human traffic or interference on the yard. All horses had been stabled for three hours before the study began. The association between genres and behavioural frequencies recorded for each environment was tested using Fisher’s Exact test of association (P<0.01), IBM SPSS21. No statistically significant associations (P=1.0) were recorded between alert or relax behaviours in Country, Classical, and Control environments. Significant associations (P<0.001) between frequency of alert behaviours and Jazz and Rock environments were noted. The latter genres appeared the most aversive which may be due to fast tempo and minor key, especially in the Jazz piece used. Country and Classical genres were slow tempo with a major key and appeared to result in more restful behaviours than Jazz or Rock. Further research is needed to; assess whether music could be used as an enriching tool, and investigate equine emotional capabilities to understand the emotional effects of music. Future studies could also consider how music impacts upon the behaviour of the human handler and whether this influences equine behaviour.
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Seyfarth, R. M., & Cheney, D. L. (1984). The acoustic features of vervet monkey grunts. J Acoust Soc Am, 75(5), 1623–1628.
Abstract: East African vervet monkeys give short (125 ms), harsh-sounding grunts to each other in a variety of social situations: when approaching a dominant or subordinate member of their group, when moving into a new area of their range, or upon seeing another group. Although all these vocalizations sound similar to humans, field playback experiments have shown that the monkeys distinguish at least four different calls. Acoustic analysis reveals that grunts have an aperiodic F0, at roughly 240 Hz. Most grunts exhibit a spectral peak close to this irregular F0. Grunts may also contain a second, rising or falling frequency peak, between 550 and 900 Hz. The location and changes in these two frequency peaks are the cues most likely to be used by vervets when distinguishing different grunt types.
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Harland, M. M., Stewart, A. J., Marshall, A. E., & Belknap, E. B. (2006). Diagnosis of deafness in a horse by brainstem auditory evoked potential. Can Vet J, 47(2), 151–154.
Abstract: Deafness was confirmed in a blue-eyed, 3-year-old, overo paint horse by brainstem auditory evoked potential. Congenital inherited deafness associated with lack of facial pigmentation was suspected. Assessment of hearing should be considered, especially in paint horses, at the time of pre-purchase examination. Brainstem auditory evoked potential assessment is well tolerated and accurate.
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Shettleworth, S. J. (1972). Stimulus relevance in the control of drinking and conditioned fear responses in domestic chicks (Gallus gallus). J Comp Physiol Psychol, 80(2), 175–198.
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Zentall, S. S., & Zentall, T. R. (1976). Activity and task performance of hyperactive children as a function of environmental stimulation. J Consult Clin Psychol, 44(5), 693–697.
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Seyfarth, R. M., & Cheney, D. L. (2003). Signalers and receivers in animal communication. Annu Rev Psychol, 54, 145–173.
Abstract: In animal communication natural selection favors callers who vocalize to affect the behavior of listeners and listeners who acquire information from vocalizations, using this information to represent their environment. The acquisition of information in the wild is similar to the learning that occurs in laboratory conditioning experiments. It also has some parallels with language. The dichotomous view that animal signals must be either referential or emotional is false, because they can easily be both: The mechanisms that cause a signaler to vocalize do not limit a listener's ability to extract information from the call. The inability of most animals to recognize the mental states of others distinguishes animal communication most clearly from human language. Whereas signalers may vocalize to change a listener's behavior, they do not call to inform others. Listeners acquire information from signalers who do not, in the human sense, intend to provide it.
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Friederici, A. D., & Alter, K. (2004). Lateralization of auditory language functions: a dynamic dual pathway model. Brain Lang, 89(2), 267–276.
Abstract: Spoken language comprehension requires the coordination of different subprocesses in time. After the initial acoustic analysis the system has to extract segmental information such as phonemes, syntactic elements and lexical-semantic elements as well as suprasegmental information such as accentuation and intonational phrases, i.e., prosody. According to the dynamic dual pathway model of auditory language comprehension syntactic and semantic information are primarily processed in a left hemispheric temporo-frontal pathway including separate circuits for syntactic and semantic information whereas sentence level prosody is processed in a right hemispheric temporo-frontal pathway. The relative lateralization of these functions occurs as a result of stimulus properties and processing demands. The observed interaction between syntactic and prosodic information during auditory sentence comprehension is attributed to dynamic interactions between the two hemispheres.
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Krishnan, A., Gandour, J. T., Ananthakrishnan, S., Bidelman, G. M., & Smalt, C. J. (). Functional ear (a)symmetry in brainstem neural activity relevant to encoding of voice pitch: A precursor for hemispheric specialization? Brain and Language, In Press, Corrected Proof.
Abstract: Pitch processing is lateralized to the right hemisphere; linguistic pitch is further mediated by left cortical areas. This experiment investigates whether ear asymmetries vary in brainstem representation of pitch depending on linguistic status. Brainstem frequency-following responses (FFRs) were elicited by monaural stimulation of the left and right ear of 15 native speakers of Mandarin Chinese using two synthetic speech stimuli that differ in linguistic status of tone. One represented a native lexical tone (Tone 2: T2); the other, T2', a nonnative variant in which the pitch contour was a mirror image of T2 with the same starting and ending frequencies. Two 40-ms portions of f0 contours were selected in order to compare two regions (R1, early; R2 late) differing in pitch acceleration rate and perceptual saliency. In R2, linguistic status effects revealed that T2 exhibited a larger degree of FFR rightward ear asymmetry as reflected in f0 amplitude relative to T2'. Relative to midline (ear asymmetry = 0), the only ear asymmetry reaching significance was that favoring left ear stimulation elicited by T2'. By left- and right-ear stimulation separately, FFRs elicited by T2 were larger than T2' in the right ear only. Within T2', FFRs elicited by the earlier region were larger than the later in both ears. Within T2, no significant differences in FFRS were observed between regions in either ear. Collectively, these findings support the idea that origins of cortical processing preferences for perceptually-salient portions of pitch are rooted in early, preattentive stages of processing in the brainstem.
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Lemasson, A., Koda, H., Kato, A., Oyakawa, C., Blois-Heulin, C., & Masataka, N. (2010). Influence of sound specificity and familiarity on Japanese macaques' (Macaca fuscata) auditory laterality. Behav. Brain. Res., 208(1), 286–289.
Abstract: Despite attempts to generalise the left hemisphere-speech association of humans to animal communication, the debate remains open. More studies on primates are needed to explore the potential effects of sound specificity and familiarity. Familiar and non-familiar nonhuman primate contact calls, bird calls and non-biological sounds were broadcast to Japanese macaques. Macaques turned their heads preferentially towards the left (right hemisphere) when hearing conspecific or familiar primates supporting hemispheric specialisation. Our results support the role of experience in brain organisation and the importance of social factors to understand laterality evolution.
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Cheney, D. L., Seyfarth, R. M., & Silk, J. B. (1995). The responses of female baboons (Papio cynocephalus ursinus) to anomalous social interactions: evidence for causal reasoning? J Comp Psychol, 109(2), 134–141.
Abstract: Baboons' (Papio cynocephalus ursinus) understanding of cause-effect relations in the context of social interactions was examined through use of a playback experiment. Under natural conditions, dominant female baboons often grunt to more subordinate mothers when interacting with their infants. Mothers occasionally respond to these grunts by uttering submissive fear barks. Subjects were played causally inconsistent call sequences in which a lower ranking female apparently grunted to a higher ranking female, and the higher ranking female apparently responded with fear barks. As a control, subjects heard a sequence made causally consistent by the inclusion of grunts from a 3rd female that was dominant to both of the others. Subjects responded significantly more strongly to the causally inconsistent sequences, suggesting that they recognized the factors that cause 1 individual to give submissive vocalizations to another.
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