Phonetic perception in rats: A new discrimination measure.

Abstract

During the last decades it has been demonstrated that language experience changes phonetic perception in humans. Some of the recent studies with animals have also revealed that, like humans, linguistic experience also changes phonetic perception in animals. These studies have relied on training procedures to measure phonetic discrimination. In the current study two experiments with rats were run to explore the role of phonetic pre-exposition using a training-exempt procedure. The results revealed that previous non-reinforced exposure to phonetic stimuli modifies their subsequent perception. Rats previously exposed and tested with sounds from the same phonetic set showed a higher generalization level of these sounds than a group of rats previously exposed to a distinct phonetic set and a group of rats not previously exposed to any speech sound.