ABSTRACT
The research compares the ability of human and nonhuman animals (songbirds) to process serial acoustic patterns. Stimuli are sound patterns that vary in absolute or relative pitch or in temporal (rhythmic) structure. In contrast with humans, who are primarily relative pitch processors, songbirds depend extensively upon absolute pitch to discriminate serial pitch patterns. They fail, for example, to generalize a discrimination between rising and falling pitch patterns to new absolute frequencies outside the range of frequencies used to train them. However, although they remain sensitive to absolute pitch, songbirds can generalize pitch relationships to new frequencies if the novel frequencies occur in a familiar range. Furthermore, within the boundaries established by this absolute pitch range constraint, songbirds discriminate pitch contour and other aspects of serial pitch processing quite well.
