Cynx J, Hulse S H, Polyzois S
J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process. 1986 Oct;12(4):394-402.
Earlier research (Hulse & Cynx, 1985) revealed that a number of species of songbirds acquired a pitch discrimination between rising and falling sequences in an arbitrarily defined training range of frequencies, but then failed to generalize the discrimination to new frequency ranges--a frequency range constraint. The two experiments here provide a psychophysical estimate of how pitch discrimination deteriorated in one species as sequences were stepped out from the training range. The gradient showing loss of discrimination was much sharper than would have been anticipated by stimulus generalization or the training procedures, and appeared unaffected by the removal of rising and falling frequency information. The frequency range constraint and its psychophysical properties have implications both for the analysis of birdsong and the study of animal cognition.
早期研究（赫尔兹和辛克斯，1985年）表明，一些鸣禽物种在任意定义的频率训练范围内获得了对上升和下降序列的音高辨别能力，但随后未能将这种辨别能力推广到新的频率范围——这是一种频率范围限制。这里的两个实验提供了一种心理物理学估计，即当序列超出训练范围时，一个物种的音高辨别能力是如何下降的。显示辨别能力丧失的梯度比刺激泛化或训练程序所预期的要陡峭得多，并且似乎不受上升和下降频率信息去除的影响。频率范围限制及其心理物理学特性对鸟鸣分析和动物认知研究都有影响。
