Journal ArticleDOI
BIRDSONG AND HUMAN SPEECH: Common Themes and Mechanisms
TLDR
Human speech and birdsong have numerous parallels, with striking similarities in how sensory experience is internalized and used to shape vocal outputs, and how learning is enhanced during a critical period of development.Abstract:
Human speech and birdsong have numerous parallels. Both humans and songbirds learn their complex vocalizations early in life, exhibiting a strong dependence on hearing the adults they will imitate, as well as themselves as they practice, and a waning of this dependence as they mature. Innate predispositions for perceiving and learning the correct sounds exist in both groups, although more evidence of innate descriptions of species-specific signals exists in songbirds, where numerous species of vocal learners have been compared. Humans also share with songbirds an early phase of learning that is primarily perceptual, which then serves to guide later vocal production. Both humans and songbirds have evolved a complex hierarchy of specialized forebrain areas in which motor and auditory centers interact closely, and which control the lower vocal motor areas also found in nonlearners. In both these vocal learners, however, how auditory feedback of self is processed in these brain areas is surprisingly unclear. Finally, humans and songbirds have similar critical periods for vocal learning, with a much greater ability to learn early in life. In both groups, the capacity for late vocal learning may be decreased by the act of learning itself, as well as by biological factors such as the hormones of puberty. Although some features of birdsong and speech are clearly not analogous, such as the capacity of language for meaning, abstraction, and flexible associations, there are striking similarities in how sensory experience is internalized and used to shape vocal outputs, and how learning is enhanced during a critical period of development. Similar neural mechanisms may therefore be involved.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Chronic dopaminergic stimulation in Parkinson's disease: from dyskinesias to impulse control disorders
Valerie Voon,Pierre-Olivier Fernagut,Jeff Wickens,Christelle Baunez,Manuel Rodriguez,Manuel Rodriguez,Nancy Pavón,Jorge L. Juncos,Jose A. Obeso,Jose A. Obeso,Erwan Bezard +10 more
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a hybrid approach to evolution and development, pointing out that though underlying assumptions held by evolutionary and developmental psychologists have been at odds, each field has much to offer the other.
Journal ArticleDOI
Metrical Categories in Infancy and Adulthood
Erin E. Hannon,Sandra E. Trehub +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors tested the effect of simple meter structures on the organization of rhythmic patterns in music by exposing listeners to folk melodies differing in metrical structure (simple or complex duration ratios), then testing them on alterations that preserved or violated the original metrical structures.
TARGET ARTICLE WITH COMMENTARY AND RESPONSE Listening to language at birth: evidence for a bias for speech in neonates
TL;DR: This article found that infants start language acquisition with a bias for listening to speech and adjusted their high amplitude sucking to preferentially listen to speech compared with complex non-speech analogues that controlled for critical spectral and temporal parameters of speech.
Metrical Categories in Infancy and Adulthood
Erin E. Hannon,Sandra E. Trehub +1 more
TL;DR: It is suggested that the metrical biases of North American adults reflect enculturation processes rather than processing predispositions for simple meters, and that 6-month-old infants responded differentially to structure-violating and structure-preserving alterations in both metrical contexts.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
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