Publications

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2025

Dam, N. C. P., Honing, H., Spierings, M. J. (2025). What imitating an iconic robot reveals on allospecific vocal imitation in parrots and starlings. Scientific Reports, 15, 36816  doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-23444-7

Burchardt, L. S., Varkevisser, J. M., & Spierings, M. J. (2025). Zebra finch tutees not only share the melody but also the rhythm of their tutor’s song. Scientific Reports, 15(1), 35573. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-22811-8

Grabner, J. V., Kempf, A. E., Nederlof, A., Varkevisser, J. M., & Spierings, M. J. (2025). Rhythmic Roots: The Adaptive Functions of Vocal Isochrony and Its Role in Human Music and Language Evolution. Psihologijske teme, 34(1), 1-24. https://doi.org/10.31820/pt.34.1.1

Bayram, B., Meijer, D., Barumerli, R., Spierings, M., Baumgartner, R., & Pomper, U. (2025). Bayesian prior uncertainty and surprisal elicit distinct neural patterns during sound localization in dynamic environments. Scientific Reports, 15(1), 7931. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-90269-9

2024

Van der Vleuten, B. J. R., Hovenkamp, V. A., Varkevisser, J. M., & Spierings, M. J. (2024). Context-dependent rhythmicity in chimpanzee displays. Proceedings B, 291(2036), 20242200. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2024.2200

French, F., Potvin, D., Hirskyj-Douglas, I., Evans, N., Jalali, A., Kleinberger, R., … & Kriengwatana, P. (2024). Empowering animals through technology: Enhancing animal agency in the sound environment. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Animal-Computer Interaction (pp. 1-5). https://doi.org/10.1145/3702336

Roth, T. S., von Wulffen, C., Fox, M., Askew, J., Spierings, M., & Perea-Garcia, J. O. (2024). Idiosyncratic long call-like vocalisations in two zoo-housed Bornean orang-utan females. Behaviour, 161(7), 567-585. https://doi.org/10.1163/1568539X-bja10273

Kriengwatana, B., Hirskyj-Douglas, I., Iyasere, O., French, F., Jalali, A., Kleinberger, R., … & Wells, D. (2024). Acoustic enrichment interest group: A network to synchronise research and explore the use of sounds for animal health and welfare. In Global Synergy for Animal Welfare: From Research to Impact.

2020

Wilson, B., Spierings, M., Ravignani, A., Mueller, J. L., Mintz, T. H., Wijnen, F., … & Rey, A. (2020). Non‐adjacent dependency learning in humans and other animals. Topics in cognitive science, 12(3), 843-858. https://doi.org/10.1111/tops.12381

2019

Filippi, P., Hoeschele, M., Spierings, M., & Bowling, D. L. (2019). Temporal modulation in speech, music, and animal vocal communication: Evidence of conserved function. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1453(1), 99-113. https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.14228

Ten Cate, C., & Spierings, M. (2019). Rules, rhythm and grouping: auditory pattern perception by birds. Animal Behaviour, 151, 249-257. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2018.11.010

2017

Spierings, M., Hubert, J., & Ten Cate, C. (2017). Selective auditory grouping by zebra finches: testing the iambic–trochaic law. Animal cognition, 20(4), 665-675. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-017-1089-3

Versace, E., Spierings, M. J., Caffini, M., Ten Cate, C., & Vallortigara, G. (2017). Spontaneous generalization of abstract multimodal patterns in young domestic chicks. Animal cognition, 20(3), 521-529. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-017-1079-5

2016

Spierings, M. J., & Ten Cate, C. (2016). Zebra finches as a model species to understand the roots of rhythm. Frontiers in neuroscience, 10, 345. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2016.00345

Spierings, M. J., & Ten Cate, C. (2016). Budgerigars and zebra finches differ in how they generalize in an artificial grammar learning experiment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(27), E3977-E3984. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1600483113

Kriengwatana, B., Spierings, M. J., & ten Cate, C. (2016). Auditory discrimination learning in zebra finches: effects of sex, early life conditions and stimulus characteristics. Animal Behaviour, 116, 99-112. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2016.03.028

Ten Cate, C., Spierings, M., Hubert, J., & Honing, H. (2016). Can birds perceive rhythmic patterns? A review and experiments on a songbird and a parrot species. Frontiers in psychology, 7, 730. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00730

2015

Spierings, M., de Weger, A., & Ten Cate, C. (2015). Pauses enhance chunk recognition in song element strings by zebra finches. Animal cognition, 18(4), 867-874. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-015-0855-3

Kriengwatana, B., Spierings, M. J., & ten Cate, C. (2015). Early life conditions affect auditory learning. In Netherlands Society for Behavioural Biology (NVG), Location: Soesterberg, Netherlands.

2014

Spierings, M. J., & ten Cate, C. (2014). Zebra finches are sensitive to prosodic features of human speech. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 281(1787), 20140480. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2014.0480

Spierings, M. J., & Cate, C. T. (2014). Prosodic cue weighting by zebra finches. In Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference (EVOLANG10)  https://doi.org/10.1142/9177

Geambaşu, A., Levelt, C. C., Spierings, M. J., & Cate, C. T. (2014). Artificial grammar learning in infants, adults, and songbirds: what is shared, what is learned?. In Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference (EVOLANG10) (pp. 443-444). https://doi.org/10.1142/9177

2012

Riebel, K., Spierings, M. J., Holveck, M. J., & Verhulst, S. (2012). Phenotypic plasticity of avian social-learning strategies. Animal Behaviour, 84(6), 1533-1539. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2012.09.029

2011

Spierings, M. J. (2011). The origin of Voices, a comparison between the neuroanatomy of normal speech perception and Auditory Verbal Hallucinations (Master’s thesis).

2009

ten Cate, C., Bruins, W. S., den Ouden, J., Egberts, T., Neevel, H., Spierings, M., … & Brokerhof, A. W. (2009). Tinbergen revisited: a replication and extension of experiments on the beak colour preferences of herring gull chicks. Animal Behaviour, 77(4), 795-802. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2008.12.020

In review (available on Bioarchive)

Common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus) do not differentiate between familiar and unfamiliar conspecifics based on pitch contour information. Grabner, J. V., Pigmans, E., Mircheva, M., Knoester, J. M., Baumgartner, R., Pomper, U., Bugnyar, T. & Spierings, M. J. bioRxiv 2025.10.27.684793; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.10.27.684793

Arousal-related mediation of perceptual belief updating across auditory domains. Fleischmann, R., Meijer, D., Bayram, B., Pellegrini, V., Pomper, U., Spierings, M. J. & Baumgartner R. bioRxiv 2025.09.10.675360; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.09.10.675360

Visual Attention Dynamics Entrain to an Auditory Beat: The Palimpsest Paradigm. Spierings, M. J. & Fitch, W. T.
bioRxiv, 2025.08. 26.672382; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.08.26.672382

The consonance of chords: The effect of subsemitone changes to each of the notes in a trichord on its perceived consonance. Varkevisser, J. M., Kruitwagen, J. M. & Spierings M. J. bioRxiv 2024.10.11.617763; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.10.11.617763

Adult male Lar gibbon sings the female great-call: A case study of inter-sex song production in a non-human primate. Judith Varkevisser, Stijn Berger, Judith van der Loo, Buddhamas Pralle Kriengwatana, Michelle Spierings bioRxiv 2024.08.21.608913; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.08.21.608913