Absolute pitch: frequency-range discriminations in pigeons (Columba livia): comparisons with zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata) and humans (Homo sapiens).

Full Abstract

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.

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Author information

Author/s: Friedrich, Andrea (A); Zentall, Thomas (T); Weisman, Ronald (R);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Kentucky, KY, USA.

Grants: MH-63726 (Agency:NIMH NIH HHS)

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Comparative Study; Journal Article; Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Journal: Journal of comparative psychology (Washington, D.C. : 1983) (J Comp Psychol), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2007-Feb; vol 121 (issue 1) : pp 95-105

Dates: Created 2007/02/27; Completed 2007/05/02; Revised 2007/12/03;

PMID: 17324079, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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