Criteria used to assign a qualitative developmental score to songs produced by first year male canaries
Developmental score criteria | Song duration | Song structure1 | Syllable structure2 | Repetition accuracy3 |
---|---|---|---|---|
Early subsong, score = 1 | >0.5 s | No | Not clearly discernable | No |
Advanced subsong, score = 2 | >1.0 s | No | Not clearly discernable | No |
Plastic song, score = 3 | >0.5 s | Structure starts to appear | Not clearly discernable | No |
Advanced plastic song, score = 4 | >0.5 s | Apparent structure | Some syllables discernable | Some phrases accurately repeated |
Crystallized song, score = 5 | >0.5 s | Apparent structure | All syllables discernable | All phrases accurately repeated |
The developmental score is based on the qualitative evaluation of the song structure, syllable utterance, and syllable repetition accuracy compared with an adult male canary during the breeding season.
↵1 Typical structure of an adult male canary contains different phrases made of syllable repetitions.
↵2 Similar to spectrogram view from an adult song.
↵3 Without visible changes in time-frequency contours between successive renditions within the spectrogram.