scholarly journals Nonadjacent dependency processing in monkeys, apes, and humans

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (43) ◽  
pp. eabb0725
Author(s):  
Stuart K. Watson ◽  
Judith M. Burkart ◽  
Steven J. Schapiro ◽  
Susan P. Lambeth ◽  
Jutta L. Mueller ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Data ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Common Marmosets ◽  
Acoustic Stimuli ◽  
Monkey Species ◽  
Evolutionary Origins ◽  
Artificial Grammars ◽  
Shared Ancestry ◽  
Nonadjacent Dependencies ◽  
Constituent Elements

The ability to track syntactic relationships between words, particularly over distances (“nonadjacent dependencies”), is a critical faculty underpinning human language, although its evolutionary origins remain poorly understood. While some monkey species are reported to process auditory nonadjacent dependencies, comparative data from apes are missing, complicating inferences regarding shared ancestry. Here, we examined nonadjacent dependency processing in common marmosets, chimpanzees, and humans using “artificial grammars”: strings of arbitrary acoustic stimuli composed of adjacent (nonhumans) or nonadjacent (all species) dependencies. Individuals from each species (i) generalized the grammars to novel stimuli and (ii) detected grammatical violations, indicating that they processed the dependencies between constituent elements. Furthermore, there was no difference between marmosets and chimpanzees in their sensitivity to nonadjacent dependencies. These notable similarities between monkeys, apes, and humans indicate that nonadjacent dependency processing, a crucial cognitive facilitator of language, is an ancestral trait that evolved at least ~40 million years before language itself.

scholarly journals Chestnut-crowned babbler calls are composed of meaningless shared building blocks

2019 ◽  
Vol 116 (39) ◽  
pp. 19579-19584 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabrina Engesser ◽  
Jennifer L. Holub ◽  
Louis G. O’Neill ◽  
Andrew F. Russell ◽  
Simon W. Townsend
Keyword(s):  
Communication Systems ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Core Component ◽  
Sound System ◽  
Combinatorial System ◽  
Constituent Elements ◽  
Combinatorial Strategy ◽  
Recent Idea ◽  
The Way

A core component of human language is its combinatorial sound system: meaningful signals are built from different combinations of meaningless sounds. Investigating whether nonhuman communication systems are also combinatorial is hampered by difficulties in identifying the extent to which vocalizations are constructed from shared, meaningless building blocks. Here we present an approach to circumvent this difficulty and show that a pair of functionally distinct chestnut-crowned babbler (Pomatostomus ruficeps) vocalizations can be decomposed into perceptibly distinct, meaningless entities that are shared across the 2 calls. Specifically, by focusing on the acoustic distinctiveness of sound elements using a habituation-discrimination paradigm on wild-caught babblers under standardized aviary conditions, we show that 2 multielement calls are composed of perceptibly distinct sounds that are reused in different arrangements across the 2 calls. Furthermore, and critically, we show that none of the 5 constituent elements elicits functionally relevant responses in receivers, indicating that the constituent sounds do not carry the meaning of the call and so are contextually meaningless. Our work, which allows combinatorial systems in animals to be more easily identified, suggests that animals can produce functionally distinct calls that are built in a way superficially reminiscent of the way that humans produce morphemes and words. The results reported lend credence to the recent idea that language’s combinatorial system may have been preceded by a superficial stage where signalers neither needed to be cognitively aware of the combinatorial strategy in place, nor of its building blocks.

scholarly journals Corepresentation During Joint Action in Marmoset Monkeys (Callithrix jacchus)

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (6) ◽  
pp. 984-995 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabia M. Miss ◽  
Judith M. Burkart
Keyword(s):  
Simon Effect ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Joint Action ◽  
Simon Task ◽  
Joint Control ◽  
Common Marmosets ◽  
Monkey Species ◽  
Joint Task ◽  
Cooperatively Breeding ◽  
Marmoset Monkeys

Behavioral coordination is a fundamental element of human cooperation. It is facilitated when individuals represent not only their own actions but also those of their partner. Identifying whether action corepresentation is unique to humans or also present in other species is therefore necessary to fully understand the evolution of human cooperation. We used the auditory joint Simon task to assess whether action corepresentation occurs in common marmosets, a monkey species that engages extensively in coordinated action during cooperative infant care. We found that marmosets indeed show a joint Simon effect. Furthermore, when coordinating their behavior in the joint task, they were more likely to look at their partner than in a joint control condition. Corepresentation is thus not unique to humans but also present in the cooperatively breeding marmosets. Since marmosets are small-brained monkeys, our results suggest that routine coordination in space and time, rather than complex cognitive abilities, plays a role in the evolution of corepresentation.

scholarly journals Restoring auditory cortex plasticity in adult mice by restricting thalamic adenosine signaling

Science ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 356 (6345) ◽  
pp. 1352-1356 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jay A. Blundon ◽  
Noah C. Roy ◽  
Brett J. W. Teubner ◽  
Jing Yu ◽  
Tae-Yeon Eom ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Auditory Cortex ◽  
Auditory Perception ◽  
Critical Period ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Acoustic Stimuli ◽  
Adult Mice ◽  
Neural Representations ◽  
Tone Discrimination ◽  
Adenosine Signaling

Circuits in the auditory cortex are highly susceptible to acoustic influences during an early postnatal critical period. The auditory cortex selectively expands neural representations of enriched acoustic stimuli, a process important for human language acquisition. Adults lack this plasticity. Here we show in the murine auditory cortex that juvenile plasticity can be reestablished in adulthood if acoustic stimuli are paired with disruption of ecto-5′-nucleotidase–dependent adenosine production or A1–adenosine receptor signaling in the auditory thalamus. This plasticity occurs at the level of cortical maps and individual neurons in the auditory cortex of awake adult mice and is associated with long-term improvement of tone-discrimination abilities. We conclude that, in adult mice, disrupting adenosine signaling in the thalamus rejuvenates plasticity in the auditory cortex and improves auditory perception.

The Evolution of Human Language

2009 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Language

My Vocational Situation: Normative, Psychometric, and Comparative Data

1988 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 162-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen B. Lucas ◽  
Norman C. Gysbers ◽  
Keith L. Buescher ◽  
P. Paul Heppner
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Data ◽  
Vocational Situation

FOXP2 gene and human language

AccessScience ◽  
2015 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Language

Counseling psychology and clinical psychology: Some preliminary comparative data.

1986 ◽  
Vol 41 (5) ◽  
pp. 581-582 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Edward Watkins ◽  
Frederick G. Lopez ◽  
Vicki L. Campbell ◽  
Catherine D. Himmell
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Psychology ◽  
Counseling Psychology ◽  
Comparative Data

In Search of a Human Language Processing System

1985 ◽  
Vol 30 (7) ◽  
pp. 529-531
Author(s):  
Patrick Carroll
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Processing System ◽  
Human Language
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