Lee Tiffany T Y, Charrier Isabelle, Bloomfield Laurie L, Weisman Ronald G, Sturdy Christopher B
Department of Psychology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
J Comp Psychol. 2006 Aug;120(3):217-28. doi: 10.1037/0735-7036.120.3.217.
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.
鸟鸣中的声频范围为识别同种鸟类提供了重要的绝对音高线索。黑头山雀（Poecile atricapillus）、山地山雀（Poecile gambeli）和斑胸草雀（Taeniopygia guttata）接受训练，根据对每个频率范围内音调的反应与奖励之间的关联，将频率连续的音调分为8个范围。所有这3个物种都获得了准确的频率范围辨别能力，但斑胸草雀在较少的试验次数内就获得了这种辨别能力，并且达到了比黑头山雀或山地山雀更高的标准，而这两种山雀在辨别能力上没有明显差异。山雀相对较差的准确性可追溯到对较高频率范围内音调的辨别能力较差。在转移测试中，当包含训练音调时，辨别能力可推广到新音调，但当省略训练音调时则不行。
