Open AccessContact calls: Information and social function
Author(s) -
KONDO NORIKO,
WATANABE SHIGERU
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
japanese psychological research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.392
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1468-5884
pISSN - 0021-5368
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-5884.2009.00399.x
Subject(s) - communication source , social contact , function (biology) , focus (optics) , communication , social function , social identity theory , identity (music) , primate , psychology , internet privacy , social psychology , social group , biology , computer science , sociology , neuroscience , evolutionary biology , acoustics , telecommunications , physics , social science , optics
The focus of acoustic communication studies differs between birds and primates due to differences between the avian and primate social structures. Contact calls exist in almost all species independent of social structure, indicating their importance for animals. Contact calls contain various types of information about the sender. They function to keep groups cohesive or to help reunite visually separated individuals. In this review, we first describe the type of information contained in the acoustic structure of contact calls, and then we consider the function of contact calls in animals' social lives, particularly their function as identity advertisements.