ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a brief historical discussion of the theory of serial stimulus organization in learning, and focuses on some applications of that theory to reinforcement processes within animal learning. It examines some recent data that have come from animal perception of serial sequences of acoustic stimuli. The operation of a relative pitch strategy for starlings is tied to an absolute pitch constraint. If pitch is the relevant discriminative attribute, absolute pitch establishes a necessary context for further processing of complex pitch relationships like relative pitch discrimination. The chapter concludes with a speculation or two concerning the implications of the research for the study of birdsong. Both relative and absolute pitch perception may be operating in allowing a bird to identify, mimic, and learn birdsong, with absolute pitch range providing the context within which relative pitch perception occurs.
