Adding colour-realistic video images to audio playbacks increases stimulus engagement but does not enhance vocal learning in zebra finches

Curiosity constructs communicative competence through social feedback loops

One of the most important challenges for a developing infant is learning how best to allocate their attention and forage for information in the midst of a great deal of novel stimulation. We propose that infants of altricial species solve this challenge by learning selectively from events that are contingent on their immature behavior, such as babbling. Such a contingency filter would focus attention and learning on the behavior of social partners, because social behavior reliably fits infants' sensitivity to contingency. In this way a contingent response by a caregiver to an immature behavior becomes a source of learnable information - feedback - to the infant. Social interactions with responsive caregivers afford infants opportunities to explore the impacts of their immature behavior on their environment, which facilitates the development of socially guided learning. Furthermore, contingent interactions are opportunities to make and test predictions about the efficacy of their social behaviors and those of others. In this chapter, we will use prelinguistic vocal learning to exemplify how infants use their developing vocal abilities to elicit learnable information about language from their social partners. Specifically, we review how caregivers' contingent responses to babbling create information that facilitates infant vocal learning and drives the development of communication. Infants play an active role in this process, as their developing predictions about the consequences of their actions serve to further refine their allocation of attention and drive increases in the maturity of their vocal behavior.

Design of a robotic zebra finch for experimental studies on developmental song learning

Birdsong learning has been consolidated as the model system of choice for exploring the biological substrates of vocal learning. In the Zebra Finch (Taeniopygia guttata), only males sing and they develop their song during a sensitive period in early life. Different experimental procedures have been used in the laboratory to train a young finch to learn a song. So far, the best method to get a faithful imitation is to keep a young bird singly with an adult male. Here we present the different characteristics of a robotic zebra finch that was developed with the goal to be used as a song tutor. The robot is morphologically similar to a real-size finch: it can produce movements and sounds contingently to the behaviours of a live bird. We present preliminary results on song imitation, and other possible applications beyond the scope of developmental song learning.