Elsevier

Behavioural Processes

Volume 85, Issue 2, October 2010, Pages 99-110
Behavioural Processes

Testing meter, rhythm, and tempo discriminations in pigeons

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2010.06.015Get rights and content

Abstract

Rhythmic grouping and discrimination is fundamental to music. When compared to the perception of pitch, rhythmic abilities in animals have received scant attention until recently. In this experiment, four pigeons were tested with three types of auditory rhythmic discriminations to investigate their processing of this aspect of sound and music. Two experiments examined a meter discrimination in which successively presented idiophonic sounds were repeated in meters of different lengths in a go/no-go discrimination task. With difficulty, the birds eventually learned to discriminate between 8/4 and 3/4 meters constructed from cymbal and tom drum sounds at 180 beats per minute. This discrimination subsequently transferred to faster tempos, but not to different drum sounds or their combination. Experiment 3 tested rhythmic and arrhythmic patterns of sounds. After 40 sessions of training, these same pigeons showed no discrimination. Experiment 4 tested repetitions of a piano sound at fast and slow tempos. This discrimination was readily learned and showed transfer to novel tempos. The pattern of results suggests that pigeons can time periodic auditory events, but their capacity to understand generalized rhythmic groupings appears limited.

Section snippets

Testing meter, rhythm, and tempo discriminations in pigeons

The production and appreciation of music is virtually a defining characteristic of our species. Because of this, interest in understanding the evolution and function of music and its constituent components has recently increased (Hauser and McDermott, 2003, McDermott and Hauser, 2005, Patel, 2008, Wallin et al., 2000). Correspondingly, the comparative examination of music has grown in an attempt to help address such issues. For instance, there are several demonstrations that various human music

Experiment 1 – meter discrimination

Experiment 1 tested pigeons on their capacity to process different meters. Meters are rhythmic patterns that derive from the series of strong accented and weak unaccented beats relative to the main pulse of a rhythm. These accents can come in the form of differences in loudness or timbre and are critical to the cognitive organization of music in humans (Clarke, 1987, Keller and Repp, 2005, Parncutt, 1994). Duple (4/4 or common time) and triple (3/4 or waltz time) meters are common examples in

Animals

Four experimentally naïve male White Carneaux pigeons (Columba livia; obtained from Palmetto Pigeon Plant, Sumter, SC) were tested. The birds were maintained at 80–85% of their free-feeding weight during testing with free access to water and grit. They were housed in a colony room with a 12:12-h light–dark cycle.

Apparatus

Testing was conducted in a flat black Plexiglas-paneled operant chamber (15.5″ wide × 16.5″ high × 14″ deep) contained within a sound-dampening chamber made of homasote soundboard lined

Experiment 2 – extensions

The main goal of Experiment 2 was to create and test a generalized meter discrimination. Such a discrimination would help to better discern the relative contributions of rhythmic grouping, timing, and counting in the discrimination established during the latter portions of Experiment 1. Towards this goal, Experiment 2 involved several different manipulations.

The first part of the experiment expanded the number of stimuli tested with the 8/4 and 3/4 meters. Showing that different types of

Animals and apparatus

The same pigeons and apparatus were used as in the previous experiment.

Phase 1

This phase reintroduced the KS stimuli using the 8/4 and 3/4 meters. Each session consisted of 96 randomly ordered trials (24 CT8+/24 CT3− and 24 KS8+/24 KS3−) tested at a tempo of 180 bpm. Two probe trials for each stimulus set were tested during each session. Other aspects of the trial organization were the same as at the end of Experiment 1. Twenty sessions using this organization were conducted.

Phase 2

In Phase 2 the pigeons

Experiment 3 – rhythmic vs. arrhythmic discrimination

At this point, we decided to try a different approach to investigating their appreciation of rhythm. Another critical component of rhythm discrimination is determining whether the interval between two beats is periodic or not. In this next experiment we examined the role of beat isochronicity in the perception of rhythmic structure by pigeons. Again, little animal research on this aspect of rhythm has been conducted (Fay, 1994, Hulse et al., 1984). Hulse et al. (1984) have found that starlings

Animals and apparatus

The same pigeons and apparatus were used as in Experiments 1 and 2.

Procedure

The pigeons were required to discriminate rhythmic and arrhythmic patterns during each session. Each trial used one of the four drum sounds (C, T, K, and S) that were previously used in Experiments 1 and 2. After a peck to the ready signal, each sound presentation lasted 20 s. The isochronous rhythmic pattern was the S+ condition for all pigeons and reinforced on a VI-10 schedule. They were also given 2-s response-independent

Experiment 4 – tempo discrimination

Given the outcomes of the three previous experiments, we decided in the fourth experiment to try yet a simpler form of rhythmic discrimination. Because it is fundamental to rhythm, tempo has been considered an auditory primitive (Hulse et al., 1992). Within the limited literature on rhythmic discrimination in animals, it appears that tempo discriminations are relatively robust over a variety of species and procedures (Hulse and Kline, 1993, McDermott and Hauser, 2007, Schneider and Lickliter,

Animals and apparatus

The same pigeons and apparatus were used as in the previous experiments.

Training

The pigeons were tested with 20 s presentations of repeating auditory stimuli presented at either 120 bpm (S+) or 30 bpm (S−). The repeating stimulus was a low C (130.81 Hz) synthetic piano sound (Garageband, Apple Computer, Inc; Cupertino, California). For the 30 bpm condition the duration of the note was 2 s, while for the 120 bpm condition it was 0.5 s in duration. Following their initial attacks, sound intensity diminished

General discussion

These experiments tested pigeons with various forms of rhythmic discriminations. Overall, the pigeons appear to be capable of learning rhythmic discriminations that relied on relative timing or tempo of the periodic stimuli. Beyond that, they seem to have more difficulties in learning other forms of rhythmic discriminations. The pigeons failed to learn a generalized discrimination between rhythmic and arrhythmic patterns of sounds involving different tempos. Although not easily learned, under

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by Grant #0718804 from the National Science Foundation. The authors thank Ani Patel for comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.

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