Vocal Identification Research Articles

Use of acoustic signals in Cape fur seal mother-pup reunions: individual signature, signal propagation and pup home range.

The Cape fur seal (Arctocephalus pusillus pusillus) is one of the most colonial mammals, with colonies of up to hundreds of thousands of individuals during the breeding season. During the lactation period, mothers and pups are regularly separated as females undertake multi-day foraging trips at sea. Mothers and pups use a mutual vocal recognition system to reunite after separation. Such communication is highly constrained by both high background noise and risk of individual confusion owing to the density of seals. This study aimed to experimentally assess the acoustic features relevant for mother-pup vocal identification and the propagation properties of their calls. Playback experiments revealed that mother and pup individual vocal signatures rely on both temporal and frequency parameters: amplitude and frequency modulations, timbre and fundamental frequency (f0). This is more parameters than in any colonial species studied so far. The combinational use of acoustic features reinforces the concept that both environmental and social constraints may have acted as selective pressures on the individual vocal recognition systems. Theoretical propagation distances of mother and pup vocalisations were estimated to be below the range of distances at which mother-pup reunions can occur. This suggests that Cape fur seals may have strong abilities to extract vocal signals from the background noise, as previously demonstrated in the highly colonial king penguin. Investigating the transmission of information throughout the propagation of the signal as well as the ability of the receiving individual to decipher vocal signatures is crucial to understanding vocal recognition systems in the wild.

Vocal identification: The metatextuality of the electronic voice phenomenon Based on the transcript “Breakthrough” by Konstantīns Raudive

The article’s subject deals with some aspects of transcommunication and its relation to literature; in particular, the metatextual nature of transcommunicative audio recordings as material for the methods of instrumental transcommunication (ITC) and the phenomenon of electronic voice (EPV). These terms are used to describe the data, obtained through the use of electronic devices and technologies to communicate with spirits or entities from other dimensions. The article problem is focused on the essence of the basic EVP form of paranormal investigation utilized to identify and interpret messages, images, or other forms of communication from the “meta-sphere” using devices such as radios, televisions, computers and other electronics. Konstantīns Raudive, one of the first researchers of transcommunication, believed that these devices, radios in particular, could be used as a means of making contact with spirits or entities that exist outside of physical reality and can manipulate electronic signals or other forms of energy to send messages that can be interpreted by the living. The article aims to methodologically process transcommunication as a controversial field that is not widely accepted by the scientific community due to a lack of empirical evidence to support the existence of entities or communication of this type. That is why many skeptics claim that this experience can be explained by natural phenomena such as pareidolia (the tendency to perceive meaningful patterns in random stimuli) or electromagnetic interference, and therefore many examples of EVP are dismissed as fictitious, amateurish, and staged. It is important to note that paranormal researchers approach transcommunication with a considerable level of skepticism and caution, and therefore the results of the research are full of potential for further studies to recognize that this field of science is overwhelmingly speculative yet prospective, especially when viewed from a literary perspective. The article novelty encapsulates the possibility of a literary interpretation of transcommunication from the standpoint of metatextuality as one of a myriad of feasible approaches.

Symbolic Cretanness: Descendants of Cretan Muslims in Present-Day Turkey

Abstract This article investigates the relationship between second- and third-generation descendants of Cretan Muslims in Turkey and their Cretanness. It takes the public manifestations of and heightened involvement with Cretanness that have recently been taking place in Turkey as a starting point and develops a framework to elucidate the contemporary dynamics of Cretanness. Through in-depth interviews and participant observation, this study reveals that Cretanness has undergone transformation for the current generations. It is characterized by the fading of certain cultural aspects, but by a parallel vocal identification with Cretanness. This dual pattern is unified under the concept “symbolic Cretanness,” inspired by Herbert Gans’ notion of “symbolic ethnicity.” The article argues that this current form of Cretanness encompasses the pursuit of visibility, an intermittent involvement with origins, and the precedence of symbols, the most significant of which is food.

An adaptive algorithm for voice quality based on big data voiceprint identification

Abstract This paper improves the speech amplitude in Bayesian speech enhancement estimation by introducing a super-Gaussian cardinality distribution probability density function in the filter's construction. The derivation is combined with the perceptual error function, the new probability density function and the perceptual error cost function to better exploit and utilize the prior statistical information of the speech. The results show that the proposed method can improve the signal-to-noise ratio up to 0.7 dB under different noises and different signal-to-noise ratios, and the processed speech has better feasibility, which provides good speech enhancement for the processing of noisy speech quality in vocal identification practice without significantly increasing the computational complexity and can be better adapted to the application.

Early onset of postnatal individual vocal recognition in a highly colonial mammal species.

Mother-young vocal recognition is widespread in mammals. The features of vocal recognition are known to be shaped by the ecological constraints faced by each species. In some species, a rapid establishment of mother-young vocal recognition is crucial for offspring's survival. However, knowledge of the precise features of this recognition system, especially the timing of the onset in the first hours after birth, is often lacking. Here we show that Cape fur seal females can recognize their pup's voice 2-4 h after parturition and that pups develop this aptitude 4-6 h after birth. This study is the first to investigate this mechanism in a wild and free-ranging mammal from only 2 h after birth. We report the fastest establishment of mother-young vocal recognition for any mammalian species, including humans, described to date. Such early vocal identification in pups suggests an in utero vocal imprinting. These findings highlight the synergistic role of environmental constraints and biological traits in optimizing the timing of individual vocal recognition onset in vertebrates.

A smart home system with security and electrical appliances

As the need for the daily household appliances and home security increases, the application of interaction technologies and electrical appliances used in smart home system has been widely developed. Considering home security, life convenience, and construction cost, a smart home system conjugated with single-chip controlling unit is presented in the paper. The functions of an intelligent home design include daily tasks (cooking, a morning wake-up call) and security mission when residents are not at home. Here, infrared ray sensors used to detect the intruding event are installed onto the entrances (i.e. windows and door). In addition, an IPCAM’s motion detecting function is also adopted for intruding event detecting. Considering the entrance convenience (without key) and safe (key losing) when coming home, a vocal identification system in conjunction with keyboard inputting device (an auxiliary device for the vocal identification system) system is adopted in the second generation of smart home system. In order to facilitate the manipulation of the smart home system, an android-based cell phone connected to the microcontroller is also established. And, to assure the home safety, the second lock (lock #2) will be triggered by the user via the cell phone if the intruding event is confirmed. The user can open the optional window to recheck the reality. Moreover, a ventilation system linked to thermal detectors can be automatically triggered via internet. Consequently, “family activity” can be pretended by the audio broadcast system while the house is vacant.

The Effects of Single- Versus Multiple-Exemplar Training on Vocal Identification of Artists’ Styles

The purpose of the present study was to assess the effects of single- versus multiple-exemplar training with several artists’ paintings on graduate students’ stimulus generalization to novel paintings by the same artists. Six graduate students participated in this study. Participants studied decks of cards that depicted images of paintings by six different artists. Multiple-exemplar decks included three exemplars of three artists for a total of nine cards, and single-exemplar decks included single exemplars of three artists for a total of three cards. Participants “tested out” when ready following independent study with each deck and were required to score 100 % correct in order to move on to a generalization probe, during which participants were presented with novel exemplars. Overall, four of six participants performed better on the generalization probe after multiple-exemplar training, though in the case of three participants, only to a slight degree. These modest effects suggest that multiple-exemplar training may facilitate stimulus generalization, but that studying with single exemplars may allow for stimulus generalization as well.

Mother Vocal Recognition in Antarctic Fur Seal Arctocephalus gazella Pups: A Two-Step Process.

In otariids, mother’s recognition by pups is essential to their survival since females nurse exclusively their own young and can be very aggressive towards non-kin. Antarctic fur seal, Arctocephalus gazella, come ashore to breed and form dense colonies. During the 4-month lactation period, females alternate foraging trips at sea with suckling period ashore. On each return to the colony, females and pups first use vocalizations to find each other among several hundred conspecifics and olfaction is used as a final check. Such vocal identification has to be highly efficient. In this present study, we investigated the components of the individual vocal signature used by pups to identify their mothers by performing playback experiments on pups with synthetic signals. We thus tested the efficiency of this individual vocal signature by performing propagation tests and by testing pups at different playback distances. Pups use both amplitude and frequency modulations to identify their mother’s voice, as well as the energy spectrum. Propagation tests showed that frequency modulations propagated reliably up to 64m, whereas amplitude modulations and spectral content greatly were highly degraded for distances over 8m. Playback on pups at different distances suggested that the individual identification is a two-step process: at long range, pups identified first the frequency modulation pattern of their mother’s calls, and other components of the vocal signature at closer range. The individual vocal recognition system developed by Antarctic fur seals is well adapted to face the main constraint of finding kin in a crowd.

Improving individual identification in captive Eastern grey wolves (Canis lupus lycaon) using the time course of howl amplitudes

Many bioacoustic studies have been able to identify individual mammals from variations in the fundamental frequency (F0) of their vocalizations. Other characteristics of vocalization which encode individuality, such as amplitude, are less frequently used because of problems with background noise and recording fidelity over distance. In this paper, we investigate whether the inclusion of amplitude variables improves the accuracy of individual howl identification in captive Eastern grey wolves (Canis lupus lycaon). We also explore whether the use of a bespoke code to extract the howl features, combined with histogram-derived principal component analysis (PCA) values, can improve current individual wolf howl identification accuracies. From a total of 89 solo howls from six captive individuals, where distances between wolf and observer were short, we achieved 95.5% (+9.0% improvement) individual identification accuracy of captive wolves using discriminant function analysis (DFA) to classify simple scalar variables of F0 and normalized amplitudes. Moreover, this accuracy was increased by 100% when using histogram-derived PCA values of F0 and amplitudes of the first harmonic. We suggest that individual identification accuracy can be improved by including amplitude changes for species where F0 has only been included so far. Using DFA on PCA values of both F0 and amplitude could optimize vocal identification in a range of mammal bioacoustic studies.

Gestures in vocal performance and the experience of the listener: a case study of extra-semantic meaning-making in the singing of Olavi Virta

AbstractAt the level of micro-intonation, singing provides an object for intimate corporeal identification for the listener. In fact, the listener can, by way of vocal identification, achieve a direct corporeal relationship with the vocal performance. Similarly, the researcher can use his/her own purposeful identification and imitation as a means of observation. ‘Once in a century’ is a description often attached to the legendary singer Olavi Virta (1915–1972), who had a significant impact on Finnish popular music during the 1950s and is considered a cultural icon by many Finns. In this article, the vocal performance on the novelty recording ‘Luonasi jos oisin (‘If I were there with you’)/Isn’t it Romantic?’ is studied in order to map out its gestural content. Olavi Virta was in possession of a rich arsenal of vocal gestures. The gestures shared a relationship with the semantic content of the lyrics – not always mimetic but often contrapuntal, polarising, or estranging.

INDIVIDUALITY IN SCOPS OWL OTUS SCOPS VOCALISATIONS

ABSTRACT The focus of this study was to determine whether individual vocal identification of Scops Owls Otus scops was possible and if there was a stability of the hoot-calls over a short time period in the same individuals. Spontaneous vocalizations of 13 owls were recorded in 2004 in Southern Tuscany, Italy. Visual analysis of spectrograms and quantitative multivariate analysis of six vocal features showed marked individual differences. In some owls a repertoire of two different hoot types was found. In 2005, 10 Scops owls were recorded three times in the same breeding season (2 hours and 10 days after the first session). Statistical analysis of data showed that 60% of owls did not change call features over time. However a slight but significant variability between successive vocal performances of the same owl was found in 40% of cases. This variability may decrease the recognition power by acoustic analysis. To overcome this obstacle I suggest a multi step qualitative/quantitative approach. A Difference Index (DI) was calculated to set a threshold between the slight intra-individual and the very high inter-individual variability. This method allowed the recognition of calls of each owl recorded over time in 2005.

Relationships between attentional blink magnitude, RSVP target accuracy, and performance on other cognitive tasks

When two masked, to-be-attended targets are presented within approximately half a second of each other, performance on the second target (T2) suffers, relative to when the targets are presented further apart in time or when the first target (T1) can be ignored. This pattern of results is known as the attentional blink (AB). Typically, participants differ with respect to the magnitude of their AB and their overall target accuracy. Despite investigations as to what participant characteristics may influence AB performance (e.g., age, brain damage, or mood state), there has been no focused examination of whether individual differences in cognitive performance measures predict the magnitude of the AB or overall rapid serial visual presentation(RSVP) target accuracy. Our university studentparticipants performed single-target and dual-target RSVP tasks, as well as a selection of cognitive tasks that did not use RSVP presentations, with color, letter, digit, and object stimuli. Overall performance on each of the RSVP targets (T1, T2, and single target) was predicted by speeded manual and vocal identification times to isolated stimuli and by performance with other RSVP targets. However, the magnitude of the AB was predicted only by T1 accuracy, not by any other performance measures. The results suggest that individual differences in AB magnitude do not result from differences in effective RSVP target encoding and are not well explained by varied information-processing abilities.

Mother‐Young Recognition in an Ungulate Hider Species: A Unidirectional Process

Parent-offspring recognition is usually crucial for survival of young. In mammals, olfaction often only permits identification at short range, and vocalizations are important at longer distances. Following and hiding antipredator strategies found in newborn mammals may also affect parental recognition mechanisms. We investigated mother-offspring recognition in fallow deer, an ungulate hider species. We analyzed the structure of adult female and fawn contact calls to determine whether they are individually distinctive and tested for mother-offspring recognition. Only females (and not fawns) have individualized vocalizations, with the fundamental frequency as the most distinctive parameter. Playback experiments showed that fawns can distinguish the calls of their mothers from those of other females, but mothers could not discriminate their own and alien fawn calls. Thus, the vocal identification process is unidirectional. In followers, mother-offspring acoustic recognition is mutual, and therefore the different antipredator strategies of newborn mammals may have shaped the modalities of parent-offspring acoustic recognition.

Vocal individuality as a potential long-term monitoring tool for Western Screech-owls, Megascops kennicottii

Recent studies suggest that individually distinctive vocalizations found in many avian species can be used in population monitoring. In this study we assessed whether vocal identification of male Western Screech-owls ( Megascops kennicottii (Elliot, 1867)) was possible, and if it could be applied as a long-term monitoring tool. Recordings were collected between 2001 and 2003 from 28 territories on southern and central Vancouver Island. As a quantitative descriptor of the calls, a total of 17 variables were measured from each of 1125 calls. A discriminant function analysis resulted in 92.3% of calls being correctly classified to individual territories within one season and 87.3% of calls in a cross-validation of the model. Variables that showed the greatest discriminant ability included length of call, internote distance between first note and second note, and number of notes per call. Of the 14 territories that had owl calls recorded over 2 years, 4 appeared to be occupied by a different individual in the 2nd year, 7 had calls that were consistent between years, and 3 had calls that were ambiguously classified between years. Our results suggest that Western Screech-owl calls have enough individually recognizable characteristics to aid in the tracking of individuals both within and between years, allowing for long-term monitoring of individuals.

Vocal signature recognition of mothers by fur seal pups

Subantarctic fur seals, Arctocephalus tropicalis, come ashore to breed in dense colonies and lactating females have to alternate foraging trips at sea with periods ashore during which they suckle their pups. The effectiveness of vocal recognition between mothers and pups, has been shown experimentally. To see whether the recognition abilities of females differ from those of their offspring, we investigated how pups recognize their mother's calls. We used artificially modified signals in playback experiments to determine which acoustic parameters support the recognition process. Pups used both the energy spectrum and the ascending frequency modulation occurring at the beginning of each call. However, they seemed to rely mainly on spectral analyses. The vocal identification process at a perceptual level is therefore asymmetrical, as mothers mainly use temporal structures to recognize their pup's calls. Copyright 2003 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd on behalf of The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.

Sistema de Comando Remoto por Voz para un Móvil

This document presents a study of some of the main technologies available for speech recognition and wireless communications. Also the implementation of a mobile system is presented, this mobile is able to respond to the user´s voice, by using of efficient methods for the movement control. The speech recognition system of voice commands obtained after evaluation of several options, was achieved through the use of integrated circuit HM2007, which is implemented in a neuronal network, for vocal commands identification. The commands are codified and transmitted later by infrared way. The information arrives at the mobile and is processed by the control digital systems, which govern of direct way his behavior. The speech recognition system is portable and independent of mobile, which it commands of remote form to, so that it could be adapted to other tasks, that imply the speech control .

Vocal identification of individual African Wood Owls Strix woodfordii: a technique to monitor long‐term adult turnover and residency

The hoot‐calls of Wood Owls Strix woodfordii, recorded in the Kruger National Park, South Africa, from 1986 to 1998, are sufficiently different to distinguish individuals. Thirteen hoot‐call variables, measured from recordings over this period, show that male and female Wood Owls have such temporal stability that these calls can be used reliably as a long‐term census technique. manova, based on ordinations from principal component analysis, was used to identify individuals statistically between sampling periods. A forward stepwise discriminant function analysis achieved 100% classification success of individual male (n = 3) and female (n = 4) owls from a single sampling period. For all the individuals recorded over the whole study period we achieved a classification success of 80.9% (n = 9) for male hoot calls and of 96.3% (n = 13) for female calls. We found mean occupation periods of 82.25 and 65 months and annual turnover rates of 19.3% and 13.65% for males and females, respectively. Our survey, using vocalizations, is unique since we use data collected over a 12‐year period to derive estimates of population turnover in Wood Owls, and consider what questions can be addressed in similar studies.

Simple vocal identification method of porpoise sonar signals using an acoustic data logger and a time depth recorder

Individual identification is needed for the standard behavioral observation. However, the vocal identification of cetacean sound is difficult even using an acoustic data logger attached to the animal, because it is hard to exclude the sounds from a nearby conspecific. This paper shows that simultaneous measurement of echolocation signals and the dive depth of a free-ranging finless porpoise (Neophocaena phocaenoides) enables vocal identification. Echolocation signals of a juvenile finless porpoise were observed with an acoustic data logger attached to the upper posterior side of the pectoral fin by a suction cup. The acoustic data logger had 4.8-kHz sampling frequency and recorded each event of pulse, processed by an amplitude peak hold circuit. Dive depth and swim speed of the porpoise were recorded by another data logger every 1 s. Surface reflection of echolocation signals was clearly detected during shallow dives less than 2 m in depth. The delay time of the reflected signal corresponded with the two-way transmission time from the animal dive depth to the surface. This shows that the signals were from the animal wearing the data loggers.

RANGE EXTENSIONS OF BIRDS IN SOUTHEASTERN AMAZONIA

We report range extensions of Caprimulgus sericocaudatus, Automolus ochrolaemus, Dichrozona cincta, Poecilotriccus andrei, Ramphotrigon fuscicauda, Ramphotrigon megacephala, Turdus lawrencii, and Euphonia chrysopasta for Pinkaiti and Gorotire, east of the Xingu River, southeastern Pará State, Brazil. The distributional status of the following species in southeastern Amazonia is also discussed: Nonnula ruficapilla, Synallaxis cherriei, and Simoxenops ucayalae. The new records we report suggest that the patchy distribution of some birds in eastern Amazonia, such as species associated with bamboo, can be explained by a complex mosaic of habitats at the eastern and southern fringes of the Amazonian basin. The range extensions we report demonstrate that areas inventoried a long time ago, before an emphasis on vocal identification of species, and assumed to be “well known”, can in fact turn out to be ornithologically undersampled.

Vocal Self-Identification Singing Style, and Singing Range in Relationship to a Measure of Cultural Mistrust in African-American Adolescent Females

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between high or low cultural mistrust and the vocal characteristics of African-American adolescent females (N = 44). The vocal characteristics were vocal self identification, singing style, and singing range. The subjects were assigned to high or low cultural mistrust groups based on scores on the Cultural Mistrust Inventory. A researcher-devised vocal self-identification survey provided information about the subjects' vocal self-concepts and acceptance of vocal models. Subjects sang “America” in a key and style of choice for the singing-style measurement. The performances were analyzed for eight style characteristics: bends, glides, breathiness, hoarseness, raspiness, dips, hard attacks, and emphasis of chest voice. Results indicated statistically significant differences between two groups on each vocal characteristic. The high-mistrust group demonstrated more characteristics associated with the African-American culture than did the low-mistrust group.