Pitch cue learning in chinchillas: The role of spectral region in the training stimulus

Abstract

Chinchillas were trained to discriminate a cosine-phase harmonic tone complex (COS) from wideband noise (WBN) and tested in a stimulus generalization paradigm with tone complexes in which phase differed between frequency regions. In this split-phase condition, responses to complexes made of random-phase low frequencies, cosine-phase high frequencies were similar to responses to the COS-training stimulus. However, responses to complexes made of cosine-phase low frequencies, random-phase high frequencies were generally lower than their responses to the COS-training stimulus. When tested with sine-phase (SIN) and random-phase (RND) tone complexes, responses were large for SIN, but were small for RND. Chinchillas were then trained to discriminate infinitely-iterated rippled noise (IIRN) from WBN and tested with noises in which the spectral ripple differed between frequency regions. In this split-spectrum condition, responses were large to noises made of rippled-spectrum low frequencies, flat-spectrum high frequencies, whereas responses were generally lower to noises made of flat-spectrum low frequencies, rippled-spectrum high frequencies. The results suggest that chinchillas listen across all frequencies, but attend to high frequencies when discriminating COS from WBN and attend to low frequencies when discriminating IIRN from WBN.