Foundations in Music Psychology by Peter Jason Rentfrow and Daniel J. Levitin

Author:Peter Jason Rentfrow and Daniel J. Levitin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Music psychology; Music perception; Music cognition; Music training; Music performance; Musical preferences; Psychoacoustics; Music and Emotion; Musical Aptitude; Music Therapy
Publisher: The MIT Press

Specifically, the birds were trained to discriminate sequences rising in pitch (with tone timbres in the order O, C, T, S, where O = oboe; C = choir “aah”; M = muted trumpet; S = synthesizer) from sequences falling in pitch (with timbres in the order T, O, S, C). Thus, in these sequences all tones had a clear harmonic structure, but each tone differed in spectral structure from the next, so that pitch and timbre patterns provided redundant cues for discriminating rising from falling sequences. The birds readily learned this discrimination (figure 11.5c). Bregman et al. (2016) then tested their ability to recognize (i.e., generalize their discrimination to) transposed versions of these sequences, both within and outside the training range. Contrary to the hypothesis, the birds showed no generalization, even for small transpositions entirely within the training range (e.g., an upward transposition of just one semitone from the lowest training pair).

This finding seemed consistent with the idea that birds use absolute pitch (AP) to recognize tone sequences. To directly test if AP was indeed the primary cue driving recognition, Bregman et al. (2016) tested if the starlings would generalize their discrimination to tone sequences exactly matched in AP to the training sequences, but differing in timbre (made from piano tones). Surprisingly, the birds did not generalize to these AP-matched sequences, indicating that AP was not the essential cue for tone sequence recognition.

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