Publications

Taylor, A. M. , Reby, D. & McComb, K. (2008). Human listeners attend to size information in domestic dog growls. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 123, 2903–2909. CLICK FOR PDF

Abstract: The acoustic features of vocalizations have the potential to transmit information about the size of callers. Most acoustic studies have focused on intra-specific perceptual abilities, but here, the ability of humans to use growls to assess the size of adult domestic dogs was tested. In a first experiment, the formants of growls were shifted to create playback stimuli with different formant dispersions (df), simulating different vocal tract lengths within the natural range of variation. Mean fundamental frequency (F0) was left unchanged and treated as a co-variate. In a second experiment, F0 was re-synthesized and df was left unchanged. In both experiments df and F0 influenced how participants rated the size of stimuli. Lower formant and fundamental frequencies were rated as belonging to larger dogs and vice-versa. Crucially, when F0 was manipulated and df was natural, ratings were strongly correlated with the actual weight of the dogs, while when df was varied and F0 was natural, ratings were not related to the actual weight. Taken together, this suggests that participants relied more heavily on df, in accordance with the fact that formants are better predictors of body size than F0.

This research has also been presented at the following conferences:

• International BioAcoustic Council (Pavia, Italy - 15/09/2007-18/09/2008)

• Vocal Communication in Birds and Mammals (St Andrews, Scotland - 31/07/2008-02/08/2008) PDF OF POSTER