Frequency-range discriminations and absolute pitch in black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus), mountain chickadees (Poecile gambeli), and zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata).

Abstract

The acoustic frequency ranges in birdsongs provide important absolute pitch cues for the recognition of conspecifics. Black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus), mountain chickadees (Poecile gambeli), and zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata) were trained to sort tones contiguous in frequency into 8 ranges on the basis of associations between response to the tones in each range and reward. All 3 species acquired accurate frequency-range discriminations, but zebra finches acquired the discrimination in fewer trials and to a higher standard than black-capped or mountain chickadees, which did not differ appreciably in the discrimination. Chickadees' relatively poorer accuracy was traced to poorer discrimination of tones in the higher frequency ranges. During transfer tests, the discrimination generalized to novel tones when the training tones were included, but not when they were omitted.

Connectionism and Classical Conditioning

“…A bird demonstrates that it has learned not to respond to a stimulus by remaining on its perch. Lee et al (2006) were able to use this paradigm that two different types of chickadees, as well as zebra finches, could learn to discriminate different frequencies of tones.…”

“…For example, consider the go-no go paradigm used in a recent study of discrimination learning in birds (Lee, Charrier, Bloomfield, Weisman, & Sturdy, 2006).…”

Categories, concepts, and calls: Auditory perceptual mechanisms and cognitive abilities across different types of birds

“…Studies have found that songbird species will rely on absolute pitch relations, even on tasks designed to use relative pitch rules, and the birds learned the absolute relations by rote memorization (e.g., Hulse and Cynx, 1985;Cynx et al, 1986). However, it has been demonstrated that black-capped chickadees can learn discrimination tasks using both absolute (Lee et al, 2006) and relative (Hoeschele, Cook, Guillette, Brooks et al, 2012; pitch relations. Chickadees' abilities to learn tasks utilizing absolute and relative pitch relationships may be the result of the pitch relations that they attend to within their songs.…”

Preface to the Special Issue on Animal Music Perception

“…In response to this work, Ron Weisman and many colleagues (Friedrich, Zentall, & Weisman, 2007;Lee, Charrier, Bloomfield, Weisman, & Sturdy, 2006;Weisman et al, 2010;Weisman, Balkwill, Hoeschele, Moscicki, & Sturdy, 2012) systematically assessed the absolute pitch abilities of humans and other mammalian and avian species when presented with tones using a simple operant conditioning task. The animals were rewarded for responding to some tones but not to other tones.…”