Study
The role of auditory feedback in the control of vocalization in the white-crowned sparrow
Konishi, Masakazu
Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie, 1965
Sparrows were surgically deafened at different points in development — some before they had heard any song, some after hearing a tutor but before singing themselves, and some after their own song had already stabilised — and the songs they subsequently produced were recorded.
- Studied in
- Zonotrichia leucophrys
- Sample size
- sparrows deafened at different developmental stages
Birds deafened before singing produced highly abnormal, unstructured song even when they had already heard a tutor. Birds deafened after their song had crystallised continued to sing the song they already had.
What it means
The authors' reading, and ours. Where they differ, that difference is the point.
How the authors put it
A bird needs to hear itself in order to match its output to a memorised template; once the song is crystallised, auditory feedback is no longer required to maintain it.
How NatureHQ reads it
This is the experiment that separates the two things "learning a song" runs together. Hearing the tutor is memorisation; hearing yourself is the practice loop that gets your own output to match the memory. A bird that has heard the model and cannot hear itself has the target and no way to aim at it, and the result is the same disorganised song as a bird that never heard anything. The parallel with human speech is genuine and specific — this is why people who lose their hearing after acquiring speech keep it, and why congenital deafness affects speech production so differently.
- Surgical deafening is irreversible and non-specific; it removes all auditory input, not only the bird’s own voice.
- One species. The degree to which crystallised song becomes feedback-independent varies considerably across songbirds, and in open-ended learners it does not fully happen at all.
- Ethical standards for this design have changed substantially; it would not be run the same way now.
Taking away a bird’s ability to hear itself
Is hearing the tutor enough, or does a bird also need to hear itself in order to learn the song?
What this study is used for on NatureHQ
One study can inform several subjects. Here is everywhere this one is cited.
How birds learn to sing
Hearing the tutor is not enough. A young bird also has to hear its own attempts, and one that cannot ends up singing as badly as a bird that never heard anything.
How birds learn to sing
Young birds do something genuinely like babbling — variable practice that narrows towards a model heard earlier — and that similarity is about how a motor skill is acquired, not about language.
Published by: Wiley journalsPublished in a Wiley journal.
doi.org/10.1111/j.1439-0310.1965.tb01688.x
Checked against OpenAlex and Crossref on 2026-09-28, and they agree on the title, the authors and the year.
NatureHQ summarises research in its own words and does not reproduce published text. Reviewed 2026-09-02.