Can macaques perceive place of articulation from formant transition information?

Abstract

An important problem in speech perception is to determine how humans extract the perceptually invariant place of articulation information in the speechwave across variable acoustic contexts. Although analyses have been developed that attempted to classify the voiced stops /b/ versus /d/ from stimulus onset information, most of the human perceptual research to date suggests that formant transition information is more important than onset information. The purpose of the present study was to determine if animal subjects, specifically Japanese macaque monkeys, are capable of categorizing /b/ versus /d/ in synthesized consonant–vowel (CV) syllables using only formant transition information. Three monkeys were trained to differentiate CV syllables with a “go-left” versus a “go-right” label. All monkeys first learned to differentiate a /zɑ/ versus /dɑ/ manner contrast and easily transferred to three new vowel contexts /ɔ, ɛ, ɪ/. Next, two of the three monkeys learned to differentiate a /bɑ/ versus /dɑ/ stop place contrast, but were unable to transfer it to the different vowel contexts. These results suggest that animals may not use the same mechanisms as humans do for classifying place contrasts, and call for further investigation of animal perception of formant transition information versus stimulus onset information in place contrasts.