Discrimination and classification of rising and nonrising pitch patterns by the European starling (Sturnus vulgaris)

Braaten, Richard F.; Hulse, Stewart H.; Page, Suzanne C.

doi:10.3758/bf03205317

Cited by 13 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…Although the original stimuli were designed to discourage the use of absolute cues, there was a partial confound between absolute and relative pitch. When this confound was eliminated, so that only relative pitch information was available, songbirds failed to acquire the discrimination (Braaten, Hulse, & Page, 1990; Page, Hulse, & Cynx, 1989). This suggests that any relative pitch perception may depend on a songbird first identifying the patterns on the basis of their absolute properties.…”

Section: Experimental Evidence For Absolute Pitchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Similarities in absolute and relative pitch perception in songbirds (starling and zebra finch) and a nonsongbird (pigeon).

Cynx

1995

Journal of Comparative Psychology

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Earlier research revealed that songbirds can acquire a frequency discrimination between rising and falling sequences. The discrimination generalized to novel frequencies within the training range, providing evidence for relative pitch perception. However, it failed to generalize to frequencies outside the training range, showing a form of absolute pitch perception. The author replicates the earlier research with starlings and extends it to another species of songbird. He then shows that pigeons, a nonsongbird species, require more trials to acquire the discrimination. However, once they have learned the discrimination they respond the same as songbirds to psychophysical tests for relative and absolute pitch perception. Pitch perception, as previously determined for birds that learn their vocalizations, is shown here to be the same in at least 1 species that does not learn its vocalizations.

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Section: Experimental Evidence For Absolute Pitchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Similarities in absolute and relative pitch perception in songbirds (starling and zebra finch) and a nonsongbird (pigeon).

Cynx

1995

Journal of Comparative Psychology

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“…Recently, comparative psychologists have begun to study animals' perceptionof relationships among acoustic elements. A number of experiments have been conducted to study the perception of serial frequency relationships (Braaten, Hulse, & Page, 1990;D 'Amato, 1988;D'Amato & Salmon, 1982, 1984Dooling, Brown, Park, Okanoya, & Soli, 1987;Hulse & Cynx, 1985Hulse, Cynx, & Humpal, 1984;Hulse, Page, & Braaten, 1990b;Page, Hulse, & Cynx, 1989). Such studies have generally involved training animals to discriminate among two or more patterns.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Perceptual organization of auditory temporal patterns in European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris)

Braaten

Hulse

1993

Perception & Psychophysics

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The perception of continuously repeating auditory patterns by European starlings was explored in seven experiments. In Experiment 1, 4 starlings learned to discriminate between two continuously repeating, eight-element, auditory patterns. Each eight-element pattern was constructed from different temporal organizations of two elements differing in timbre. In Experiments 2-7, the repeating patterns were transformed in ways designed to identify the starlings' perceptual organization of the patterns. In Experiment 2, the starlings identified patterns beginning with novel starting points. In Experiment 3, discrimination performance was adversely affected by reorganizing the elements in the patterns. In Experiments 4 and 5, the pattern elements were altered. In Experiment 4, the patterns were constructed from two novel elements. In Experiment 5, the temporal location of the two pattern elements was reversed. The transformations of the patterns in Experiments 4 and 5 affected discrimination performance for some, but not all, of the starlings. In Experiments 6 and 7, replacing either of the two elements with silent intervals had no effect on discrimination performance. The results of these experiments identify basic grouping principles that starlings use when they perceive auditory patterns.

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“…However, these songbirds preferentially discriminated tonal patterns according to the absolute frequency of the individual element tones in the patterns; they failed to transfer discrimination to a novel frequency range when the training frequency range was shifted. Only when the experimental conditions severely constrained the use of pattern element cues did the songbirds use pitch relations as a secondary strategy (Hulse and Cynx, 1986;Hulse et al, 1984;Braaten et al, 1990). Data like these lead to the conclusion that birds, unlike humans, cannot generalize relative pitch discrimination to new frequencies, thus lacking a conceptual grasp of frequency modulation in complex sounds.…”

Section: Auditory Categorization In Birdsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Categorical Auditory Working Memory in Crows

Wagener

Nieder

2020

iScience

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The ability to group sensory data into behaviorally meaningful classes and to maintain these perceptual categories active in working memory is key to intelligent behavior. Here, we show that carrion crows, highly vocal and cognitively advanced corvid songbirds, possess categorical auditory working memory. The crows were trained in a delayed match-to-category task that required them to flexibly match remembered sounds based on the upward or downward shift of the sounds' frequency modulation. After training, the crows instantaneously classified novel sounds into the correct auditory categories. The crows showed sharp category boundaries as a function of the relative frequency interval of the modulation. In addition, the crows generalized frequency-modulated sounds within a category and correctly classified novel sounds kept in working memory irrespective of other acoustic features of the sound. This suggests that crows can form and actively memorize auditory perceptual categories in the service of cognitive control of their goal-directed behaviors.

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Discrimination and classification of rising and nonrising pitch patterns by the European starling (Sturnus vulgaris)

Cited by 13 publications

References 33 publications

Similarities in absolute and relative pitch perception in songbirds (starling and zebra finch) and a nonsongbird (pigeon).

Similarities in absolute and relative pitch perception in songbirds (starling and zebra finch) and a nonsongbird (pigeon).

Perceptual organization of auditory temporal patterns in European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris)

Categorical Auditory Working Memory in Crows

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