Auditory duration discrimination in the parakeet (M
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Dooling, Robert J.; Haskell, Royal J.

doi:10.1121/1.381865

Cited by 42 publications

(22 citation statements)

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“…Fortunately, such comparative data are available. The temporal resolving power of budgerigars measured psychoacoustically appears to be roughly similar to that reported for humans (Dooling & Haskell, 1978;Dooling & Searcy, 1981, 1985b. Thus, to the extent that temporal cues underlie these speech-sound categories, budgerigars and humans would be expected to show similar categories and boundaries.…”

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confidence: 59%

Speech perception by budgerigars(Melopsittacus undulatus): The voiced-voiceless distinction

Dooling

Okanoya

Brown

1989

Perception & Psychophysics

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Discrimination of synthetic speech sounds from the bilabial, alveolar, and velar voice onset time (VOT) series was studied in 5 budgerigars. The birds were trained, using operant conditioning procedures, to detect changes in a repeating background of sound consisting of a synthetic speech token. Response latencies for detection were measured and were used to construct similarity matrices. Multidimensional scaling procedures were then used to produce spatial maps of these speech sounds, in which perceptual similarity was represented by spatial proximity. The results of these experiments suggest that budgerigars discriminate among synthetic speech sounds from these three VOT continua, especially between those from the bilabial and alveolar series, in a categorical fashion.

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confidence: 59%

Speech perception by budgerigars(Melopsittacus undulatus): The voiced-voiceless distinction

Dooling

Okanoya

Brown

1989

Perception & Psychophysics

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“…Just noticeable differences reported in the literature for timing vary depending on the question being asked. Parakeets can detect a change of 10 -20% in the duration of a signal (Dooling and Haskell 1978), while zebra finches are able to detect gaps of only 2-3 ms in broadband noise (Okanoya and Dooling 1990). In our study, we found that the females were easily able to discriminate songs compressed by 32% from those expanded by 32%, although they generalized completely to both these stimuli.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 51%

Differential Influence of Frequency, Timing, and Intensity Cues in a Complex Acoustic Categorization Task

Nagel

McLendon

Doupe

2010

Journal of Neurophysiology

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Nagel KI, McLendon HM, Doupe AJ. Differential influence of frequency, timing, and intensity cues in a complex acoustic categorization task. J Neurophysiol 104: 1426 -1437, 2010. First published July 7, 2010 doi:10.1152/jn.00028.2010. Songbirds, which, like humans, learn complex vocalizations, provide an excellent model for the study of acoustic pattern recognition. Here we examined the role of three basic acoustic parameters in an ethologically relevant categorization task. Female zebra finches were first trained to classify songs as belonging to one of two males and then asked whether they could generalize this knowledge to songs systematically altered with respect to frequency, timing, or intensity. Birds' performance on song categorization fell off rapidly when songs were altered in frequency or intensity, but they generalized well to songs that were changed in duration by Ͼ25%. Birds were not deaf to timing changes, however; they detected these tempo alterations when asked to discriminate between the same song played back at two different speeds. In addition, when birds were retrained with songs at many intensities, they could correctly categorize songs over a wide range of volumes. Thus although they can detect all these cues, birds attend less to tempo than to frequency or intensity cues during song categorization. These results are unexpected for several reasons: zebra finches normally encounter a wide range of song volumes but most failed to generalize across volumes in this task; males produce only slight variations in tempo, but females generalized widely over changes in song duration; and all three acoustic parameters are critical for auditory neurons. Thus behavioral data place surprising constraints on the relationship between previous experience, behavioral task, neural responses, and perception. We discuss implications for models of auditory pattern recognition.

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“…The criterion response method has been used in visual and auditory physiology (Chafee and Hampson, 1924;Riggs, Berry, and Wayner, 1949;Dooling and Walsh, 1976;Boynton, 1979) to generate iso-potential curves. The iso-potential contrast sensitivity curves generated from the contrast-response …”

Section: Criterion-response Analysis Of Contrast Sensitivitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial contrast sensitivity of birds

2006

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Contrast sensitivity (CS) is the ability of the observer to discriminate between adjacent stimuli on the basis of their differences in relative luminosity (contrast) rather than their absolute luminances. Prior to this study, birds had been thought to have low contrast detection thresholds relative to mammals and fishes. This was a surprising phenomenon because birds had been traditionally attributed with superior vision. In addition, the low CS of birds could not be explained by retinal or optical factors, or secondary stimulus characteristics. Unfortunately, avian contrast sensitivity functions (CSFs) were sparse in the literature, so it was unknown whether low contrast sensitivity was a general phenomenon in birds. This study measured CS in six species of birds The quail and pigeon data obtained in this experiment fit well with existing CS data for these species. The kestrel data were not similar to kestrel data in the literature; however the data in the literature were collected from a single subject. All of the birds studied had contrast sensitivities that were consistent with their retinal or optical morphologies relative to other birds (in species for which such data exists) and seem well suited for their natural environments. In addition, all of these birds exhibited low CS relative to humans and most mammals, which suggests that low CS is a general phenomenon of birds.Explanations for this avian low CS phenomenon include a possible trade-off between contrast mechanisms and UV mechanisms in cone systems, and lateral inhibitory mechanisms that are perhaps categorically different from mammals. Lateral inhibition affects contrast gain, and has been shown to differ according to ganglion cell types, which in turn will differ in vertebrate species.

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Auditory duration discrimination in the parakeet (M e l o p s i t t a c u s u n d u l

Cited by 42 publications

References 0 publications

Speech perception by budgerigars(Melopsittacus undulatus): The voiced-voiceless distinction

Speech perception by budgerigars(Melopsittacus undulatus): The voiced-voiceless distinction

Differential Influence of Frequency, Timing, and Intensity Cues in a Complex Acoustic Categorization Task

Spatial contrast sensitivity of birds

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