Abstract
European starlings (Sturnuis vulgaris) were trained to discriminate between pulses of sound presented at rates (tempos), for different birds, of 4/sec and 8/sec or 8/sec and 16/sec in a two-alternative choice task. Once the discrimination was learned, psychometric functions and bisection points were determined for tempos between the standards. Then the starlings were transferred to a new discrimination, which either maintained or changed the relationship between response keys and tempo (relational or nonrelational transfer). The results showed that the starlings generated psychometric functions for tempo with properties much like those found for discrimination of single time intervals. Also, the starlings transferred the tempo discrimination faster under the relational than the nonrelational condition. In general, starlings-like human and other nonhuman animals-perceive temporal structures as invariant over proportional changes in the duration of structural elements.
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We thank Richard Braaten, Daniel Bernard, Cynthia Gray, Suzanne Page, and Annie Takeuchi for many helpful comments about the manuscript. The research reported in this paper was supported by National Science Foundation Grant BNS-8911046.
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Hulse, S.H., Kline, C.L. The perception of time relations in auditory tempo discrimination. Animal Learning & Behavior 21, 281–288 (1993). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03197992
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03197992