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In practically every animal that uses the auditory modality, distinguishing between complex sounds is a constantly occurring and extremely important process. Complex sounds are sounds that differ continuously over the course of their duration. In animals such as songbirds, this processing is paramount to understanding the calls of their conspecifics. This study examines recent data using procedures ... read moreoriginally by Cook and Brooks (2009) to test for complex sound processing in pigeons, vocal nonlearners with no capacity for song. Four pigeons (Columbia livia) were trained in a go/no-go task in which they successfully learned to peck at sequences of different sounds and withhold pecking during same-sound sequences of complex stimuli. Repetitive (same) trials were analyzed to see what factors influenced the birds pecking. The study found that pigeons suppressed pecking more on birdsong stimuli versus artificial complex sounds and largely ignored local patterns in sound, ostensibly demonstrating that pigeons too demonstrated a holistic ability to integrate sounds over time into comparable units.read less
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