Spectral cues and temporal integration during cylinder echo discrimination by bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus)

Three bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) participated in simulated cylinder wall thickness discrimination tasks utilizing electronic “phantom” echoes. The first experiment resulted in psychometric functions (percent correct vs wall thickness difference) similar to those produced by a dolphin p...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 2020-08, Vol.148 (2), p.614-626
Main Authors: Branstetter, Brian K., Van Alstyne, Kaitlin R., Strahan, Madelyn G., Tormey, Megan N., Wu, Teri, Breitenstein, Rachel A., Houser, Dorian S., Finneran, James J., Xitco, Mark J.
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:Three bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) participated in simulated cylinder wall thickness discrimination tasks utilizing electronic “phantom” echoes. The first experiment resulted in psychometric functions (percent correct vs wall thickness difference) similar to those produced by a dolphin performing the task with physical cylinders. In the second experiment, a wide range of cylinder echoes was simulated, with the time separation between echo highlights covering a range from 300 μs. Dolphin performance and a model of the dolphin auditory periphery suggest that the dolphins used high-frequency, spectral-profiles of the echoes for discrimination and that the utility of spectral cues degraded when the time separation between echo highlights approached and exceeded the dolphin's temporal integration time of ∼264 μs.
ISSN:0001-4966
1520-8524
DOI:10.1121/10.0001626