Abstract
The monkey’s capacity to extract tonal pattern from a sequence of tones was assessed in four subjects that had the benefit of substantial past experience in discriminating, matching, and remembering acoustic stimuli. In Experiment 1, the monkeys failed to transfer their well-established matching behavior to the matching of two structured sequences of tones that differed primarily in tonal pattern, indicating that for them tonal pattern was not a salient feature of the acoustic stimuli. Experiment 2 was an attempt to encourage tonal pattern perception by employing, within a discrimination paradigm, very simple tonal patterns and multiple exemplars of the positive and negative patterns; the transfer design, borrowed from Hulse and Cynx (1985), was a powerful one for revealing tonal pattern perception. Verifying earlier results from our laboratory, there was little in the monkeys’ transfer performance to indicate that they had extracted tonal pattern from the acoustic stimuli. Major discriminative control seemed to be vested in the first tone of each exemplar. This apparent cognitive limitation may be rather general among animals, perhaps reflecting an intimate connection between the capacity for tonal pattern perception and that for acoustically based language.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Beecher, M. D., Peterson, M. R., Zoloth, S. R., Moody, D. B., &Stebbins, W. C. (1979). Perception of conspecific vocalizations by Japanese macaques.Brain, Behavior & Evolution,16, 443–460
Cheney, D., Seyfarth, R., &Smuts, B. (1986). Social relationships and social cognition in nonhuman primates.Science,234, 1361–1366.
Colombo, M., &D’Amato, M. R. (1986). A comparison of visual and auditory short-term memory in monkeys (Cebus apella).Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology,38B, 425–448.
Cynx, J., Hulse, S. H., &Polyzois, S. (1986). A psychophysical measure of pitch discrimination loss resulting from a frequency range constraint in European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris).Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes,12, 394–402.
D’Amato, M. R. (1988) A search for tonal pattern perception in cebus monkeys: Why monkeys can’t hum a tune.Music Perception,5, 453–480.
D’Amato, M. R., &Colombo, M. (1985). Auditory matching-to-sample in monkeys (Cebus apella).Animal Learning & Behavior,13, 375–382.
D’Amato, M. R., &Salmon, D. P. (1982). Tune discrimination in monkeys (Cebus apella) and in rats.Animal Learning & Behavior,10, 126–134.
D’Amato, M. R., &Salmon, D. P. (1984). Processing of complex auditory stimuli (tunes) by rats and monkeys (Cebus apella).Animal Learning & Behavior,12, 184–194.
Dooling, R. J., Brown, S. D., Park, T. J., Okanoya, K., &Soli, S. D. (1987). Perceptual organization of acoustic stimuli by budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus).Journal of Comparative Psychology,101, 139–149.
Hulse, S. H., &Cynx, J. (1985). Relative pitch perception is constrained by absolute pitch in songbirds (Mimus, Molothrus, & Sturnus).Journal of Comparative Psychology,99, 176–196.
Papousek, M., &Papousek, H. (1981). Musical elements in the infant’s vocalizations: Their significance for communication, cognition, and creativity. In L. P. Lipsitt (Ed.),Advances in infant research, (Vol 1, pp. 163–224). Norwook, NJ: Ablex.
Richards, D. G., Wolz, J. P., &Herman, L. M. (1984). Vocal mimicry of computer-generated sounds and vocal labeling of objects by a bottlenosed dolphin,Tursiops truncatus. Journal of Comparative Psychology,98, 10–28.
Robinson, J. G. (1984). Syntactic structures in the vocalizations of wedge-capped capuchin monkeys,Cebus olivaceus. Behaviour,90, 46–79.
Savage-Rumbaugh, S., McDonald, K., Sevcik, R. A., Hopkins, W. D., &Rubert, E. (1986). Spontaneous symbol acquisition and communicative use by pygmy chimpanzees (Pan paniscus).Journal of Experimental Psychology: General,115, 211–235
Seyfarth, R. M., Cheney, D. L., &Marler, P. (1980). Monkey responses to three different alarm calls: Evidence of predator classification and semantic communication.Science,210, 801–803.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
The present research was supported by National Science Foundation Grant BNS-8417383. The major findings of Experiments 1 and 2 were briefly described in D’Amato (1988).
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
D’Amato, M.R., Colombo, M. On tonal pattern perception in monkeys (Cebus apella). Animal Learning & Behavior 16, 417–424 (1988). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03209381
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03209381