Discrimination of sea-bird sounds vs. garden-bird songs: Do Scottish and German-Saxon infants show the same preferential looking behaviour as adults?

Abstract

Birdsong and human speech share some genetic origins (Haesler, Rochefort, Georgi, Licznerski, Osten, & Scharff, 2007; Vargha-Khadem, Gadian, Copp, & Mishkin, 2005). In two studies (N = 67 infants and N = 28 adults) in Scotland (UK) and Saxony (Germany), perceptual discrimination of innate, repetitive, lower frequency sea-bird sounds vs. learned, melodic, higher frequency garden-bird songs was tested in infants in their first year as well as in adults, using the conditioned head-turn procedure (CHTP; e.g., Jusczyk, Friederici, Wessels, Svernkerud, & Jusczyk, 1993). Infants and adults reliably distinguished between the two types of sounds. Independently of environment, infants paid more attention to sea-bird sounds than to garden-bird songs, while adults showed the reverse preference. Further analysis revealed additional insights into the underlying processes.

Keywords:

• Bird sound preference
• Categorical bird sound perception
• Infants and evolution
• Faculty of language in broad and narrow sense (FLB FLN)

George Agnew, University of Aberdeen, and Felicitas Rost, London Metropolitan University, are thanked for the data collection. The University of Aberdeen, the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, the Max Planck Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience, Leipzig, and the London Metropolitan University provided technical support for the setup of the experimental head-turn infant laboratory. Tricia Striano and Angela Friederici are thanked for their interest and scientific support of the research.