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Informative Value of Vocalizations during Multimodal Interactions in Red-Capped Mangabeys

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Discovering Hidden Temporal Patterns in Behavior and Interaction

Part of the book series: Neuromethods ((NM,volume 111))

Abstract

Social interactions can be viewed as “dialogs” during which messages between partners can be multimodal, consisting of several simultaneous or sequential signals from different sensory modalities. The nature of a message and the way it will be interpreted may depend on the signals, their order, but also the time intervals between them. This study analyzed the sequential organization of multimodal interactions with and without vocalizations to determine the influence of vocalizations on the behavioral structure of these interactions; to this purpose, we used Theme software which extracts behavioral structures (“patterns”) within behavioral sequences. These behavioral structures are characterized by their temporal organization. Our results on a captive group of red-capped mangabeys (Cercocebus torquatus torquatus) showed that during sociosexual interactions, vocalizations were signals associated with decision-making process of the caller, to initiate contact with a partner some distance away. During grooming interactions, in contrast, vocalizations were not associated with the decision-making process of initiating an interaction. Patterns extracted from interactions with and without calls differed in the number, nature, and position of the decision points they included. So, information conveyed by vocalizations was neither fully original nor redundant with that conveyed by other sensory modalities. Calls seem to reduce complexity of interactions and to decrease the number of decision points partners used to mutually adjust their behaviors. Calls also play a role in structuring interactions as they may occur in patterns either at the beginning or in the “middle” of the interactions but never at the end of them.

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Acknowledgements

We thank OHLL program for its financial support, Mr Philippe Bec for his help during the handling of the animals. All of the experiments complied with the current laws of the country in which they were conducted (France).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. UMR 6552 CNRS, Biological Station of Paimpont, University of Rennes 1, Paimpont, France

    Isabelle Baraud & Catherine Blois-Heulin

  2. E.N.V.A, Chemin des Châteaux, 35380, Plélan le Grand, France

    Bertrand L. Deputte

  3. UMR 6553 CNRS, University of Rennes 1, Campus of Beaulieu, Beaulieu, France

    Jean-Sébastien Pierre

Authors
  1. Isabelle Baraud
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  2. Bertrand L. Deputte
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  3. Jean-Sébastien Pierre
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  4. Catherine Blois-Heulin
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Bertrand L. Deputte .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland

    Magnus S. Magnusson

  2. University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Judee K. Burgoon

  3. Department of Bio.Ne.C., University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy

    Maurizio Casarrubea

Appendices

Appendix 1: Examples of Behaviors from the Behavioral Catalogue of Cercocebus T. Torquatus Used for the Study

Except when otherwise mentioned, only subsets of behaviors used to describe mangabeys’ interactions are presented here.

Visual behaviors, including locomotor behaviors, facial expressions, and gaze behaviors:

Locomotor behaviors:

  • To avoid a partner (with a movement of the whole body)

  • To chase a partner in a playful context (pursuit)

  • To chase a partner while displaying aggressive signals

  • To present to a partner = Present, while having the tail up putting the ischial callosities and the callosities against the face of a partner

  • To turn towards a partner: the subject was assuming a sitting posture and ended facing his partner. In addition the subject was within an arm’s reach of his partner

  • To walk away from a partner (the partner was close or in contact with the subject) = to leave

  • To walk towards a partner

Facial expressions:

  • To threaten a partner

  • To lip smack towards a partner from a distance

  • To display a “play face” towards a partner from a distance

Gazes:

  • To follow (≥2 s) a partner with one’s eyes (the partner is moving)

  • To glance (<2 s) at a partner (other body parts than the genitals, callosity, tail, mouth; see below)

  • To glance at what a partner is doing (e.g., looking at fingers of a partner who is eating or grooming or handling an object, etc.)

  • To glance at what a partner is holding (implies that the partner is not doing anything with the held item)

  • To glance backward at a partner

  • To look at a partner (who is motionless) (≥2 s)

  • To look at a partner’s genitals

  • To look at what a partner is doing (looking at fingers of a partner who is eating or grooming or handling an object, etc.)

  • To look at what a partner is holding (see above)

  • To look backward at a partner (who is motionless)

Olfactory behaviors (all the olfactory behaviors used in the study are reported here):

  • To sniff at a partner (on a body part other than mouth, genitals, and tail)

  • To sniff at what a partner holds in his hands

  • To sniff the callosity of a partner

  • To sniff the genitals of a partner

  • To sniff the mouth of a partner

  • To sniff the tail of a partner

Tactile behaviors:

  • To “wrestle play” with a partner

  • To bite a partner

  • To climb up onto a partner

  • To do pelvic movements while mounting a partner (with or without intromission in case of male to female mounting)

  • To embrace a partner

  • To grasp a partner (a body part other than genitals)

  • To groom a partner (on a body part other than genitals or callosity)

  • To hit a partner

  • To lick a partner

  • To touch a partner with hand (somewhere on the partner’s body other than mouth, genitals, callosity, and head)

Appendix 2: Vocal Behaviors (All the Basic Vocalizations of the Species-Specific Repertoire are Reported Here). The Names given to the Vocalizations Correspond to Onomatopoeia (Figs. 6 and 7)

Fig. 6
figure 6

Sonograms (frequency/time display) of 5 common calls from the vocal repertoire of the redcapped mangabey (Cercocebus torquatus torquatus)

Full size image
Fig. 7
figure 7

Sonograms of 5 additional calls from the vocal repertoire of the red-capped mangabey (Cercocebus torquatus torquatus). The Wo call is the red-capped mangabey’s male loud call

Full size image

Most of the other behaviors correspond to variants of the ones cited here, i.e., precisions of the speed of the locomotor movements (walking, running, jumping), or the position in relation to the partner (back/face/aside), or the body parts of the partner (leg, arm, foot, hand, callosity, genitals, mouth, tail), or the general context of the interaction, i.e., the nature of all the behaviors expressed within a given interaction (playing, aggressive) or the distance between the individual and his partner (from a distance or nearby).

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Baraud, I., Deputte, B.L., Pierre, JS., Blois-Heulin, C. (2016). Informative Value of Vocalizations during Multimodal Interactions in Red-Capped Mangabeys. In: Magnusson, M., Burgoon, J., Casarrubea, M. (eds) Discovering Hidden Temporal Patterns in Behavior and Interaction. Neuromethods, vol 111. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-3249-8_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-3249-8_14

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  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4939-3248-1

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