Cynx J
Rockefeller University Field Center for Ecology and Ethology, Millbrook, New York 12545.
J Comp Psychol. 1993 Jun;107(2):140-6. doi: 10.1037/0735-7036.107.2.140.
Many species of songbirds have absolute pitch perception. They memorize tones when discriminating between sequences and fail to generalize to novel frequency ranges. I examined frequency generalization in starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) that were trained to discriminate between individual frequencies. Starlings were tested for frequency generalization after training on 2- and 3-tone discriminations. There was no evidence for octave generalization, which is a hallmark of human absolute pitch perception. This suggests that avian absolute pitch perception must not be interpreted as identical with that in humans. A control experiment with 1-tone discriminations indicated that the presence of lit response keys affects the shape of the generalization gradients. Lit response keys are a common feature in avian auditory perception experiments, and this control experiment cautions that results may be affected by this seemingly minor procedural change.
许多鸣禽物种具有绝对音高感知能力。它们在区分序列时会记住音调，并且无法将其推广到新的频率范围。我研究了在经过训练以区分各个频率的椋鸟（Sturnus vulgaris）中的频率泛化情况。在对椋鸟进行2音和3音辨别训练后，对其进行频率泛化测试。没有证据表明存在八度泛化，而八度泛化是人类绝对音高感知的一个标志。这表明鸟类的绝对音高感知不能被解释为与人类的相同。一项单音辨别控制实验表明，亮起的反应键的存在会影响泛化梯度的形状。亮起的反应键是鸟类听觉感知实验中的一个常见特征，并且该控制实验提醒人们，结果可能会受到这种看似微小的程序变化的影响。
