Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

Language discrimination by Java sparrows.

Shigeru Watanabe1, Erico Yamamoto, Midori Uozumi

  • 1Department of Psychology, Keio University, Mita 2-15-45, Minato-Ku, Tokyo, Japan. swat@flet.keio.ac.jp

Behavioural Processes
|March 10, 2006
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Bright and water-dispersible membrane probes enable visualization of cellular morphologies and dynamics in light-scattering tissues of living mice.

Chemical science·2025
Same author

Experimental analysis of choice behavior in Japanese eel (Anguilla japonica).

Behavioural processes·2025
Same author

Correction to "NIR-II-Excitable Dye-Loaded Nanoemulsions for Two-Photon Microscopy Imaging of Capillary Blood Vessels in the Entire Hippocampal CA1 Region of Living Mice".

ACS applied materials & interfaces·2025
Same author

Correction: Synthesis and photophysical properties of a new push-pull pyrene dye with green-to-far-red emission and its application to human cellular and skin tissue imaging.

Journal of materials chemistry. B·2025
Same author

Do Cockatiels Choose Their Favourite Tunes? Use of Touchscreen for Animal Welfare Enhancement and Insights into Musical Preferences.

Animals : an open access journal from MDPI·2025
Same author

Synthesis of 1,3-Dibromopyrene as Precursor of 1-, 3-, 6-, and 8-Substituted Long-Axially Symmetric Pyrene Derivatives.

Chemistry (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany)·2024
Same journal

Sex and brain maturation underlie the attribution of incentive salience to conditioned stimuli in Wistar rats.

Behavioural processes·2026
Same journal

Shining a light on jellyfish behaviour: Enhanced motor activity and positive phototaxis in Aurelia coerulea.

Behavioural processes·2026
Same journal

Detour-task performance in color polymorphic male mosquitofish.

Behavioural processes·2026
Same journal

Behavioral and physiological changes during the estrous cycle of socially housed female guinea pigs.

Behavioural processes·2026
Same journal

Flexible time-series analysis: A dynamically aware method for inferring directed dependencies in behavioral data.

Behavioural processes·2026
Same journal

Effects of group size and landmarks on escape behavior of three fish species.

Behavioural processes·2026
See all related articles

Java sparrows can distinguish between English and Chinese languages. This study provides the first evidence of non-mammalian species discriminating human languages, showcasing advanced auditory processing in birds.

Area of Science:

  • Animal cognition
  • Bioacoustics
  • Comparative linguistics

Background:

  • Human language discrimination is a complex cognitive ability.
  • Previous research has primarily focused on mammalian species.
  • The capacity for language discrimination in non-mammalian species remains largely unexplored.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether Java sparrows (Padda oryzivora) can discriminate between spoken English and Chinese.
  • To determine if this discrimination ability generalizes to novel speech stimuli.
  • To provide the first evidence of non-mammalian language discrimination.

Main Methods:

  • Java sparrows were trained to differentiate between English and Chinese sentences.
  • Stimuli were presented by a bilingual speaker.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Generalization was tested using new sentences from the same and a different speaker.

    • Main Results:

    • Java sparrows successfully learned to discriminate between English and Chinese.
    • The birds demonstrated generalization of the learned discrimination to new sentences.
    • This generalization extended to speech from an unfamiliar speaker.

    Conclusions:

    • Java sparrows possess the cognitive ability to distinguish between human languages.
    • This finding represents the first evidence of language discrimination in a non-mammalian species.
    • The study highlights the sophisticated auditory processing capabilities in birds.