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Moving from perceptual to functional categories in songbirds

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Sturdy, C.B., Campbell, K.A., Congdon, J.V., Hahn, A.H., McMillan, N., & Scully, E.N. (in press). Moving from perceptual to functional categories in songbirds. To appear in International Journal of Comparative Psychology.

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Category perception, as Herrnstein (1990) defined it, is a powerful and pervasive cognitive ability possessed by every species in which it has been adequately tested. We have studied category perception of vocal communication signals in songbirds for over 20 years. Our first studies provided us with an understanding of songbird vocal category production and perception, clarifying perceptual categorization and the underlying mechanisms. More recent work has moved towards understanding functional vocal categories such as sex, dominance, species, and geography. Some of our most recent work has moved into the realm of conceptual knowledge, with studies aimed at understanding birds’ ability to deal with concepts of sameness and danger (i.e., threat level). Here we provide key examples that effectively show the wide range of abilities possessed and used by songbirds.

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http://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_6501 http://purl.org/coar/version/c_970fb48d4fbd8a85

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CC BY Attribution The Author and the Journal agree that eScholarship will publish the article under a Creative Commons Attribution license, which is incorporated herein by reference and is further specified at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode. A brief summary of the license agreement as presented to users is listed below: Anyone is free: to copy, distribute and transmit the work; to adapt the work; Under the following conditions: Attribution — The person copying, distributing, transmitting or adapting the work must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that he or she endorses you or your use of the work).

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en

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