Tanner and Rivette [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 36, 1465--1467 (1964)] reported that three native speakers of Punjabi were unable to discriminate frequency differences an order of magnitude greater than the usual DL's for frequency. This paper is often cited as evidence for culture-bound effects in frequency discrimination. We obtained frequency DL estimates from 34 observers comprising a number of linguistic groups, including Punjabi. No evidence of disability in frequency discrimination was found in any of the groups.
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Burns et al. (1980) studied this question.