The acquisition of three types of auditory pattern discrimination in the cat

This study compared the learning ability of cats in shock-avoidance discrimination with temporally patterned sounds. The three discriminations used involved detection of rising vs falling frequency-modulated tones, low-high vs high-low pairs of pure tones, and rising-falling vs falling-rising pairs of frequency-modulated tones. The discrimination of rising vs falling frequency-modulated tones was more easily learned than the other two discriminations.