Friedrich Andrea, Zentall Thomas, Weisman Ronald
Department of Psychology, University of Kentucky, KY, USA.
J Comp Psychol. 2007 Feb;121(1):95-105. doi: 10.1037/0735-7036.121.1.95.
Absolute pitch (AP) is the ability to classify individual pitches without an external referent. The authors compared results from pigeons (Columba livia, a nonsongbird species) with results (R. Weisman, M. Njegovan, C. Sturdy, L. Phillmore, J. Coyle, & D. Mewhort, 1998) from zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata, a songbird species) and humans (Homo sapiens) in AP tests that required classification of contiguous tones into 3 or 8 frequency ranges on the basis of correlations between the tones in each frequency range and reward. Pigeons' 3-range discriminations were similar in accuracy to those of zebra finches and humans. In the more challenging 8-range task, pigeons, like zebra finches, discriminated shifts from reward to nonreward from range to range across all 8 ranges, whereas humans discriminated only the 1st and last ranges. Taken together with previous research, the present experiments suggest that birds may have more accurate AP than mammals.
绝对音高（AP）是指在没有外部参照的情况下对单个音高进行分类的能力。作者将鸽子（家鸽，一种非鸣禽物种）的测试结果与斑胸草雀（斑胸草雀，一种鸣禽物种）和人类（智人）的结果（R. 韦斯曼、M. 涅戈万、C. 斯特迪、L. 菲尔莫尔、J. 科伊尔和D. 梅霍特，1998年）进行了比较。在绝对音高测试中，要求根据每个频率范围内的音调与奖励之间的相关性，将连续的音调分类到3个或8个频率范围内。鸽子在3个范围的辨别准确性与斑胸草雀和人类相似。在更具挑战性的8个范围的任务中，鸽子和斑胸草雀一样，能够辨别出在所有8个范围内从一个范围到另一个范围的奖励到无奖励的转变，而人类只能辨别出第一个和最后一个范围。结合先前的研究，目前的实验表明鸟类可能比哺乳动物具有更准确的绝对音高。
