Trehub S E, Endman M W, Thorpe L A
Centre for Research in Human Development, University of Toronto, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada.
J Exp Child Psychol. 1990 Apr;49(2):300-13. doi: 10.1016/0022-0965(90)90060-l.
Infants 7 to 8.5 months of age were tested for their discrimination of timbre or sound quality differences in the context of variable exemplars. They were familiarized with a set of complex tones with specified spectral structure; members of the set varied in fundamental frequency, intensity, or duration. Infants were then tested for their detection of tones that contrasted in spectral structure but were similar in other respects. They successfully differentiated the two spectral structures in the context of these variations, indicating that they can classify tonal stimuli on the basis of timbre. When the stimuli were organized into arbitrary categories, infants were unable to differentiate these categories, indicating that their performance with nonarbitrary categories was not attributable to memorization of the familiarized set.
对7至8.5个月大的婴儿进行了测试，以考察他们在可变范例情境下对音色或音质差异的辨别能力。他们先熟悉了一组具有特定频谱结构的复杂音调；该组中的成员在基频、强度或持续时间上有所不同。然后测试婴儿对频谱结构不同但在其他方面相似的音调的检测能力。在这些变化的情境下，他们成功地区分了两种频谱结构，这表明他们能够根据音色对音调刺激进行分类。当刺激被组织成任意类别时，婴儿无法区分这些类别，这表明他们在非任意类别上的表现并非归因于对熟悉集合的记忆。
