Perceptual chunking in the self-produced songs of Bengalese finches (Lonchura striata var. domestica)

Like humans, songbirds, including Bengalese finches, have hierarchical structures in their vocalizations. When humans perceive a sentence, processing occurs in phrase units, not words. In this study, we investigated whether songbirds also perceive their songs by chunks (clusters of song notes) rather than single song notes. We trained male Bengalese finches to react to a short noise in a Go/NoGo task. We then superimposed the noise onto recordings of their own songs and examined whether the reaction time was affected by the location of the short noise, that is, whether the noise was placed between chunks or in the middle of a chunk. The subjects’ reaction times to the noise in the middle of a chunk were significantly longer than those to the noise placed between chunks. This result was not observed, however, when the songs were played in reverse. We thus concluded that Bengalese finches perceive their songs by chunks rather than single notes.