title: The interplay of within-species perceptual predispositions and experience during song ontogeny in zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata).
abstract: Vocal acquisition in songbirds and humans shows many similarities, one of which is that both involve a combination of experience and perceptual predispositions. Among languages some speech sounds are shared, while others are not. This could reflect a predisposition in young infants for learning some speech sounds over others, which combines with exposure-based learning. Similarly, in songbirds, some sounds are common across populations, while others are more specific to populations or individuals. We examine whether this is also due to perceptual preferences for certain within-species element types in naive juvenile male birds, and how such preferences interact with exposure to guide subsequent song learning. We show that young zebra finches lacking previous song exposure perceptually prefer songs with more common zebra finch song element types over songs with less common elements. Next, we demonstrate that after subsequent tutoring, birds prefer tutor songs regardless of whether these contain more common or less common elements. In adulthood, birds tutored with more common elements showed a higher song similarity to their tutor song, indicating that the early bias influenced song learning. Our findings help to understand the maintenance of similarities and the presence of differences among birds' songs, their dialects and human languages.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL), Leiden University, PO Box 9505, Leiden 2300 RA, The Netherlands Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL), Leiden University, PO Box 9515, Leiden 2300 RA, The Netherlands Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition (LIBC), Leiden University, c/o LUMC, Postzone C2-S, PO Box 9600, Leiden 2300 RC, The Netherlands smhaar@ulg.ac.be.
authors.forename: Sita M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: ter Haar
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL), Leiden University, PO Box 9505, Leiden 2300 RA, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Wiebke
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Kaemper
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL), Leiden University, PO Box 9505, Leiden 2300 RA, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Koen
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Stam
authors.affiliation: Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL), Leiden University, PO Box 9515, Leiden 2300 RA, The Netherlands Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition (LIBC), Leiden University, c/o LUMC, Postzone C2-S, PO Box 9600, Leiden 2300 RC, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Clara C
authors.initials: CC
authors.lastname: Levelt
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL), Leiden University, PO Box 9505, Leiden 2300 RA, The Netherlands Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition (LIBC), Leiden University, c/o LUMC, Postzone C2-S, PO Box 9600, Leiden 2300 RC, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Carel
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: ten Cate
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000818:Animals; D046369:Finches / Q000502:physiology*; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male; D013018:Sound Spectrography; D013045:Species Specificity; D014828:Vocalization, Animal
keywords: birdsong; language; vocal development