Data from: Treefrogs exploit temporal coherence to form perceptual objects of communication signals

For many animals, navigating their environment requires an ability to
organize continuous streams of sensory input into discrete “perceptual
objects” that correspond to physical entities in visual and auditory
scenes. The human visual and auditory systems follow several Gestalt laws
of perceptual organization to bind constituent features into coherent
perceptual objects. A largely unexplored question is whether nonhuman
animals follow similar Gestalt laws in perceiving behaviorally relevant
stimuli, such as communication signals. We used females of Cope’s gray
treefrog (Hyla chrysoscelis) to test the hypothesis that temporal
coherence – a powerful Gestalt principle in human auditory scene analysis
– promotes perceptual binding in forming auditory objects of
species-typical vocalizations. According to the principle of temporal
coherence, sound elements that start and stop at the same time or that
modulate coherently over time are likely to become bound together into the
same auditory object. We found that the natural temporal coherence between
two spectral components of advertisement calls promotes their perceptual
binding into auditory objects of advertisement calls. Our findings confirm
the broad ecological validity of temporal coherence as a Gestalt law of
auditory perceptual organization guiding the formation of biologically
relevant perceptual objects in animal behavior.