ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2016
Budgerigars and zebra finches differ in how they generalize in an artificial grammar learning experiment.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 39 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
39 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 122 citations in OpenAlex.
- Exploring Variation Between Artificial Grammar Learning Experiments: Outlining a Meta-Analysis Approach.Topics in cognitive science · 2020Pooled it
- Novel Approach to Inter-Onset-Interval Ratio Uncovers Music-Like Rhythmic Patterns in Budgerigar (Melopsittacus undulatus) Warble Song.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2026Article
- Challenges and new opportunities in deciphering the meaning of corvid call sequences.Animal cognition · 2025Review
- Abstract rule learning and generalization in human and nonhuman primates.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Temporal organization of song modulates vocal learning.iScience · 2025Article
- Sequences and animal intelligence.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Detection of Individual Differences Encoded in Sequential Variations of Elements in Zebra Finch Songs.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- Stimulus-dependent emergence of understanding the 'same-different' concept in budgerigars.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Functional reorganization of brain regions supporting artificial grammar learning across the first half year of life.PLoS biology · 2024Article
- What we (don't) know about parrot welfare: Finding welfare indicators through a systematic literature review.Animal welfare (South Mimms, England) · 2024Review
- Sequence representation as an early step in the evolution of language.PLoS computational biology · 2023Article
- Learning and organization of within-session sequences by pigeons (Columba livia).Animal cognition · 2023Article
- Zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata) demonstrate cognitive flexibility in using phonology and sequence of syllables in auditory discrimination.Animal cognition · 2023Article
- Robustness of the rule-learning effect in 7-month-old infants: A close, multicenter replication of Marcus et al. (1999).Developmental science · 2023Article
- A test of memory for stimulus sequences in great apes.PloS one · 2023Article
- Exploring the neurobiology of Merge at a basic level: insights from a novel artificial grammar paradigm.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Switching costs in stochastic environments drive the emergence of matching behaviour in animal decision-making through the promotion of reward learning strategies.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Linking the genomic signatures of human beat synchronization and learned song in birds.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Category learning in a transitive inference paradigm.Memory & cognition · 2021Article
- Budgerigars have complex sleep structure similar to that of mammals.PLoS biology · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The ability to abstract a regularity that underlies strings of sounds is a core mechanism of the language faculty but might not be specific to language learning or even to humans. It is unclear whether and to what extent nonhuman animals possess the ability to abstract regularities defining the relation among arbitrary auditory items in a string and to generalize this abstraction to strings of acoustically novel items. In this study we tested these abilities in a songbird (zebra finch) and a parrot species (budgerigar). Subjects were trained in a go/no-go design to discriminate between two sets of sound strings arranged in an XYX or an XXY structure. After this discrimination was acquired, each subject was tested with test strings that were structurally identical to the training strings but consisted of either new combinations of known elements or of novel elements belonging to other element categories. Both species learned to discriminate between the two stimulus sets. However, their responses to the test strings were strikingly different. Zebra finches categorized test stimuli with previously heard elements by the ordinal position that these elements occupied in the training strings, independent of string structure. In contrast, the budgerigars categorized both novel combinations of familiar elements as well as strings consisting of novel element types by their underlying structure. They thus abstracted the relation among items in the XYX and XXY structures, an ability similar to that shown by human infants and indicating a level of abstraction comparable to analogical reasoning.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.