Mystic Aquarium & Institute for Exploration

Rochester  Institute of Technology

Dr. DeLong’s research interests include animal cognition and sensory perception.  Her research has mainly focused on echolocation (i.e., biological sonar) in bottlenose dolphins, beluga whales, and bats.  These animals emit high frequency sounds and analyze echoes reflected by objects in their environment.  Echoes are complex and can vary along many parameters such as frequency spectrum, time structure, and amplitude.  Dr. DeLong uses behavioral methods and acoustical analyses to determine how animals use acoustic parameters of echoes to discriminate among objects.  Dr. DeLong received a BA from New College of Florida in 1997, and a MA and PhD from the University of Hawaii in 2000 and 2003.  She spent a year as a Visiting Professor of Psychology at New College of Florida in 2003 – 2004. She completed postdoctoral studies at Brown University from 2004 to 2008.  She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology in the College of Liberal Arts at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York.

Dr. DeLong’s current research project is titled "Object Representation in Echolocating Beluga Whales (Delphinapterus leucas)"

Beluga whales and other odontocete cetaceans use echolocation to determine the location and structure of objects. This process starts with the projection of high-frequency sounds by the animal into the environment. Returning echoes are received by the animal, but are very complex, and can vary by parameters such as frequency spectrum, time structure and amplitude. The echolocating animal must then extract information about the object features (size, shape, material), however this process of extraction is unclear in cetaceans. The aim of this study is to determine which acoustic parameters (ie. echo spectrum, echo time structure, echo amplitude) convey information about each object featured that the animal processes.