scholarly journals Automatic comparison of human music, speech, and bird song suggests uniqueness of human scales

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiei Kuroyanagi ◽  
Shoichiro Sato ◽  
Meng-Jou Ho ◽  
Gakuto Chiba ◽  
Joren Six ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Group Performance ◽  
Bird Song ◽  
Small Integer ◽  
Scale Analysis ◽  
Bird Songs ◽  
Analysis Algorithm ◽  
Human Speech ◽  
The World ◽  
Human Tendency ◽  
Automatic Comparison

The uniqueness of human music relative to speech and animal song has been extensively debated, but never directly measured. To address this, we applied an automated scale analysis algorithm to a sample of 86 recordings of human music, human speech, and bird songs from around the world. We found that human music throughout the world uniquely emphasized scales with small-integer ratios, particularly a perfect 5th (3:2 ratio), while human speech and bird song showed no clear evidence of scale-like tuning. We speculate that the uniquely human tendency toward scales with small-integer ratios may have resulted from the evolution of synchronized group performance among humans.

scholarly journals Addendum to the Bird Song Key to the Birds of Pipeline Road Area, Soberanía National Park, Panama: Two Additional Wrens

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kent Livezey
Keyword(s):  
National Park ◽  
Bird Song ◽  
Bird Songs ◽  
The World ◽  
Similarities And Differences

Identifying species of birds by their songs is an important part of censusing, watching, and enjoying birds. However, differentiating among scores or hundreds of bird songs in an area can be difficult. Placing songs into a descriptive key can help in this endeavor by requiring the user to analyze each song and to identify similarities and differences among songs. In 2016, I published a bird song key to the Pipeline Road area in and adjacent to Soberanía National Park, Panama, which included 321 songs of 216 species. This key is, to my knowledge, the largest bird song key in the world. Since the key was published, two species—Rufous-breasted Wren (Pheugopedius rutilus) and Rufous-and-white Wren (Thryophilus rufalbus)—have moved into the area. This addendum adds three songs of Rufous-breasted Wren and three songs Rufous-and-white Wren to the key, thereby increasing the key’s song total to 327 and its species total to 218.

Ontology-based analysis of the large collection of historical Hebrew manuscripts

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maayan Zhitomirsky-Geffet ◽  
Gila Prebor ◽  
Isaac Miller
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Scale Analysis ◽  
Large Collection ◽  
Data Enrichment ◽  
Large Scale Analysis ◽  
The World ◽  
Library Catalogue ◽  
Event Based ◽  
New Framework

Abstract In this paper, we present a new semi-automatic methodology for construction of event-based ontology from the library catalogue of the largest collection in the world of metadata records of historical Hebrew manuscripts. Based on the constructed ontology, we developed and implemented a new framework for catalogue data enrichment, correction, and its systematic quantitative analysis. Finally, we demonstrate the results of the proposed large-scale analysis of three most prominent event types in the corpus, as well as a few cross-event relations and trends.

scholarly journals Knowledge Hiding: One of the Primary Reasons behind the Rapid Spread of the Novel Coronavirus COVID-19

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-177
Author(s):  
Abraham Cyril Issac
Keyword(s):  
World Health ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Rapid Spread ◽  
The World ◽  
Human Tendency ◽  
Novel Coronavirus ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
Cordon Sanitaire ◽  
Knowledge Hiding ◽  
Different Sources

Abstract The world is battling out the pandemic of Covid-19. The World Health Organization (WHO) is jointly acting upon the same daily, which is evident from the ‘situation reports.’ The pandemic, which saw its origin in Wuhan, has spread across the world within a short span of under two months. While the pandemic has effectively instilled a situation of cordon sanitaire across the globe, the virus seems to show no respite. This study collates different sources and establishes the human tendency of knowledge hiding as the prime reason for the spread of such colossal magnitudes. The study underlines the notion by examining some of the critical cases and situations that have unfolded in the very recent past.

scholarly journals Fragile Pluralism

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
Hans-Georg Soeffner
Keyword(s):  
Social World ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Language Games ◽  
Niklas Luhmann ◽  
The World ◽  
Human Tendency ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Interdisciplinary Journal

This essay first appeared in German in Magdalena Tzaneva, ed. Nachtflug der Eule: 150 Stimmen zum Werk von Niklas Luhmann. Gedenkbuch zum 15. Todestag von Niklas Luhmann (8. Dezember 1927 Lüneburg – 6. November 1998 Oerlinghausen). Berlin: LiDi EuropEdition (2013), 73–100. A shorter version of the essay was published in Hans-Georg Soeffner, and Thea D. Boldt, eds. Fragiler Pluralismus, Wiesbaden: VS Springer (2014), 207–24. The present translation for Entangled Religions – Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Religious Contact and Transfer is by Nicola Morris.   The article describes the emergence of pluralism within the process of globalization and the impact of this development upon individuals communication and the definitions of the ‘self’ and the ‘Other’. The author illustrates the pitfalls of the human tendency to view the world from an ethnocentric perspective and with the corresponding attitude. He argues that in ‘open societies’, successful citizens will be capable of recognising and articulating distinctions between individuals, as well as between groups, beliefs, lifestyles and attitudes. These citizens must also be aware and capable of adapting for their purposes the full repertoire of language games and role games in their social world, in order to perceive and utilise comprehensive systems such as frameworks for cooperation. These skills will help them implement ‘maxims of communication’ and ‘existential hypotheses’.

scholarly journals Evidence for cumulative cultural evolution in bird song

2021 ◽  
Vol 377 (1843) ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather Williams ◽  
Robert F. Lachlan
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Bird Song ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Collective Knowledge ◽  
Bird Songs ◽  
Learning Biases ◽  
Vocal Imitation ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution ◽  
Existing Form

In studies of cumulative cultural evolution in non-human animals, the focus is most often on incremental changes that increase the efficacy of an existing form of socially learned behaviour, such as the refinement of migratory pathways. In this paper, we compare the songs of different species to describe patterns of evolution in the acoustic structure of bird songs, and explore the question of what building blocks might underlie cumulative cultural evolution of bird song using a comparative approach. We suggest that three steps occurred: first, imitation of independent sounds, or notes, via social learning; second, the formation of categories of note types; and third, assembling note types into sequences with defined structures. Simple sequences can then be repeated to form simple songs or concatenated with other sequences to form segmented songs, increasing complexity. Variant forms of both the notes and the sequencing rules may then arise due to copy errors and innovation. Some variants may become established in the population because of learning biases or selection, increasing signal efficiency, or because of cultural drift. Cumulative cultural evolution of bird songs thus arises from cognitive processes such as vocal imitation, categorization during memorization and learning biases applied to basic acoustic building blocks. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘The emergence of collective knowledge and cumulative culture in animals, humans and machines’.

A computational tool for automated large-scale analysis and measurement of bird-song syntax

2012 ◽  
Vol 210 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arij Daou ◽  
Frank Johnson ◽  
Wei Wu ◽  
Richard Bertram
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Bird Song ◽  
Scale Analysis ◽  
Computational Tool ◽  
Large Scale Analysis ◽  
Song Syntax

scholarly journals Automatic comparison of global children’s and adult songs supports a sensorimotor hypothesis for the origin of musical scales

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shoichiro Sato ◽  
Joren Six ◽  
Peter Pfordresher ◽  
Shinya Fujii ◽  
Patrick E. Savage
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Developmental Stage ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Scale Structure ◽  
The Other ◽  
Small Integer ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Children's Songs ◽  
The World ◽  
Musical Scales

Music throughout the world varies greatly, yet some musical features like scale structure display striking cross-cultural similarities. Are there musical laws or biological constraints that underlie this diversity? The “vocal mistuning” hypothesis proposes that cross-cultural regularities in musical scales arise from imprecision in vocal tuning, while the integer-ratio hypothesis proposes that they arise from perceptual principles based on psychoacoustic consonance. In order to test these hypotheses, we conducted automatic comparative analysis of 100 children’s and adult songs from throughout the world. We found that children’s songs tend to have narrower melodic range, fewer scale degrees, and less precise intonation than adult songs, consistent with motor limitations due to their earlier developmental stage. On the other hand, adult and children’s songs share some common tuning intervals at small-integer ratios, particularly the perfect 5th (~3:2 ratio). These results suggest that some widespread aspects of musical scales may be caused by motor constraints, but also suggest that perceptual preferences for simple integer ratios might contribute to cross-cultural regularities in scale structure. We propose a “sensorimotor hypothesis” to unify these competing theories.

scholarly journals Field observations of ecoacoustic dynamics of a Japanese bush warbler using an open-source software for robot audition HARK

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reiji Suzuki ◽  
Shinji Sumitani ◽  
Naren Naren ◽  
Shiho Matsubayashi ◽  
Takaya Arita ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Open Source ◽  
Open Source Software ◽  
Temporal Analysis ◽  
Bird Song ◽  
Song Type ◽  
Bird Songs ◽  
Sound Sources ◽  
Singing Behavior ◽  
Robot Audition ◽  
Spatial Movement

We report on a simple and practical application of HARK, an easily available and portable system for bird song localization using an open-source software for robot audition HARK, to a deeper understanding of ecoacoustic dynamics of bird songs, focusing on a fine-scaled temporal analysis of song movement — song type dynamics in playback experiments. We extended HARKBird and constructed a system that enables us to conduct automatic playback and interactive experiments with different conditions, with a real-time recording and localization of sound sources. We investigate how playback of conspecific songs and playback patterns can affect vocalization of two types of songs and spatial movement of an individual of Japanese bush-warbler, showing quantitatively that there exist strong relationships between song type and spatial movement. We also simulated the ecoacoustic dynamics of the singing behavior of the focal individual using a software, termed Bird song explorer, which provides users a virtual experience of acoustic dynamics of bird songs using a 3D game platform Unity. Based on experimental results, we discuss how our approach can contribute to ecoacoustics in terms of two different roles of sounds: sounds as tools and subjects.

Landscape with Figures

1996 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. N. Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Soil Erosion ◽  
Human Brain ◽  
External World ◽  
Habits Of Mind ◽  
Positive Illusions ◽  
Species Extinction ◽  
Modern Psychology ◽  
The World ◽  
Human Tendency ◽  
The Brain

So wrote Edward Fitzgerald, following (loosely) the Persian of Omar Khayyám. In this quatrain, he captured what may be the most universal and constant yearning of humankind. Modern psychology has shown what many of us always suspected: humans continually, in the secrecy of their thoughts, do exactly what Fitzgerald wished. The external world is all too refractory, but “the soul is free.” Thus, humans often see what they want to see, and believe about it what they wish to believe. The external world may intrude harshly on this process, but people often show a truly instructive ability to shut out reality. Positive illusions are only one of the ways we distort information. The human brain is a wondrous device—partly because it does not produce a perfect, total representation of what the senses perceive. We are constantly reinterpreting those perceptions in terms of our wants and needs—not only needs for things like food and shelter, but also needs to see the world as hopefully as possible, to see it as simple and comprehensible, and to see it as ultimately manageable. The brain quite literally does shatter perception “to bits, and then remold it closer to the heart’s desire.” The world environmental problem is serious, and getting steadily more so. Part of the reason is that humans have seen what they wanted to see and have deliberately blinded themselves to the less desirable consequences of their actions. The built-in human tendency to see the world through rose-colored glasses has received the name “positive illusions” from social psychologist Shelley Taylor. She points out the advantages of positive illusions. They allow us to face a threatening world. However, positive illusions have their costs. It is, at the best of times, hard to get people to sacrifice short-term interests for longterm benefits. Positive illusions make it even harder. Such habits of mind lie behind much of the world’s pollution, species extinction, deforestation, overfishing, soil erosion, and famine. Political remedies have failed. The vaunted Rio de Janeiro conference of 1992 was disappointing.

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