scholarly journals Birdsong fails to support object categorization in human infants

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. e0247430
Author(s):  
Kali Woodruff Carr ◽  
Danielle R. Perszyk ◽  
Sandra R. Waxman
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Acoustic Signals ◽  
Sine Wave ◽  
Object Categorization ◽  
Infant Cognition ◽  
Human Infants ◽  
Animal Vocalization ◽  
Language And Cognition ◽  
Zebra Finch Song ◽  
Primate Vocalizations

Recent evidence reveals a precocious link between language and cognition in human infants: listening to their native language supports infants’ core cognitive processes, including object categorization, and does so in a way that other acoustic signals (e.g., time-reversed speech; sine-wave tone sequences) do not. Moreover, language is not the only signal that confers this cognitive advantage: listening to vocalizations of non-human primates also supports object categorization in 3- and 4-month-olds. Here, we move beyond primate vocalizations to clarify the breadth of acoustic signals that promote infant cognition. We ask whether listening to birdsong, another naturally produced animal vocalization, also supports object categorization in 3- and 4-month-old infants. We report that listening to zebra finch song failed to confer a cognitive advantage. This outcome brings us closer to identifying a boundary condition on the range of non-linguistic acoustic signals that initially support infant cognition.

The development of features in object concepts

1998 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe G. Schyns ◽  
Robert L. Goldstone ◽  
Jean-Pierre Thibaut
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Category Learning ◽  
Cognitive Process ◽  
Conceptual Development ◽  
Object Categorization ◽  
Constructive Induction ◽  
Fixed Space ◽  
Functional Features ◽  
High Level ◽  
Perceptual Changes

According to one productive and influential approach to cognition, categorization, object recognition, and higher level cognitive processes operate on a set of fixed features, which are the output of lower level perceptual processes. In many situations, however, it is the higher level cognitive process being executed that influences the lower level features that are created. Rather than viewing the repertoire of features as being fixed by low-level processes, we present a theory in which people create features to subserve the representation and categorization of objects. Two types of category learning should be distinguished. Fixed space category learning occurs when new categorizations are representable with the available feature set. Flexible space category learning occurs when new categorizations cannot be represented with the features available. Whether fixed or flexible, learning depends on the featural contrasts and similarities between the new category to be represented and the individual's existing concepts. Fixed feature approaches face one of two problems with tasks that call for new features: If the fixed features are fairly high level and directly useful for categorization, then they will not be flexible enough to represent all objects that might be relevant for a new task. If the fixed features are small, subsymbolic fragments (such as pixels), then regularities at the level of the functional features required to accomplish categorizations will not be captured by these primitives. We present evidence of flexible perceptual changes arising from category learning and theoretical arguments for the importance of this flexibility. We describe conditions that promote feature creation and argue against interpreting them in terms of fixed features. Finally, we discuss the implications of functional features for object categorization, conceptual development, chunking, constructive induction, and formal models of dimensionality reduction.

scholarly journals El lenguaje y los lugares construidos / The Language and the Built Places

2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco Javier Fuentes Farias
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Genetic Basis ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Language And Cognition ◽  
Human Capacity ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Self Organizing

ABSTRACTIf we don't explain the role of language in the construction of places to live, their study will be incomplete; therefore the built space poses the challenge of defining a method of analysis that takes into account the emergence of cognitive processes in human being, of which perception and categorization of objects in space seems to be the most difficult to explain. And here is where the focus on language, from the point of view of the studies of complexity, admits to interpret and explain the evolution of the human capacity of build. In this sense, it is necessary to review the problem of in witch sense it can be said that language is innate or learned, and if the mind is a blank paper at birth, or has a genetic basis and how would be like. We observed the acquisition of language and cognition, and the construction of places to live, as the product of a cultural-genetic legacy. It is necessary to offer a point of view about the relationship between culture-nature, taking built places as a superior order and self-organizing subsystem: the built spaceRESUMENMientras no se exponga el papel del lenguaje en la construcción de lugares para vivir, su estudio estará incompleto; por ello, el espacio construido plantea el reto de definir un método de análisis que tome en cuenta el surgimiento de procesos cognitivos en la especie humana, de los cuales la percepción y categorización de los objetos en el espacio parece ser el más difícil de explicar. Y es aquí donde el enfoque en el lenguaje, desde el punto de vista de los estudios de la complejidad, permite interpretar y explicar la evolución de la capacidad constructiva del ser humano. En tal sentido, es necesario revisar el problema de en qué medida puede afirmarse que el lenguaje es innato o aprendido, y si la mente es un papel en blanco al nacer, o tiene una base genética y cómo sería ello. Se examina la adquisición del lenguaje y la cognición, y la construcción de lugares para vivir, como producto de una herencia genético-cultual. Se ofrece un punto de vista necesario acerca de la relación cultura-naturaleza, considerando los lugares construidos como subsistemas de un orden superior y auto-organizado: el espacio construido.

Very young infants' responses to human and nonhuman primate vocalizations

2014 ◽  
Vol 37 (6) ◽  
pp. 553-554 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brock Ferguson ◽  
Danielle R. Perszyk ◽  
Sandra R. Waxman
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Acoustic Communication ◽  
Nonhuman Primate ◽  
Human Infants ◽  
Young Infants ◽  
Primate Vocalizations ◽  
Human Specific

AbstractRecent evidence from very young human infants' responses to human and nonhuman primate vocalizations offers new insights – and brings new questions – to the forefront for those who seek to integrate primate-general and human-specific mechanisms of acoustic communication with theories of language acquisition.

scholarly journals Just kidding: the evolutionary roots of playful teasing

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (9) ◽  
pp. 20200370
Author(s):  
Johanna Eckert ◽  
Sasha L. Winkler ◽  
Erica A. Cartmill
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Great Apes ◽  
Preliminary Evidence ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Sociological Research ◽  
Developmental Studies ◽  
Mental Life ◽  
Human Infants

Accounts of teasing have a long history in psychological and sociological research, yet teasing itself is vastly underdeveloped as a topic of study. As a phenomenon that moves along the border between aggression and play, teasing presents an opportunity to investigate key foundations of social and mental life. Developmental studies suggest that preverbal human infants already playfully tease their parents by performing ‘the unexpected,’ apparently deliberately violating the recipient's expectations to create a shared humorous experience. Teasing behaviour may be phylogenetically old and perhaps an evolutionary precursor to joking. In this review, we present preliminary evidence suggesting that non-human primates also exhibit playful teasing. In particular, we argue that great apes display three types of playful teasing described in preverbal human infants: teasing with offer and withdrawal, provocative non-compliance and disrupting others' activities. We highlight the potential of this behaviour to provide a window into complex socio-cognitive processes such as attribution of others’ expectations and, finally, we propose directions for future research and call for systematic studies of teasing behaviour in non-human primates.

scholarly journals Putting Effort Into Infant Cognition

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 180-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zsuzsa Kaldy ◽  
Erik Blaser
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Working Memory ◽  
Visual Working Memory ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Cognitive Effort ◽  
Physiological Measures ◽  
Infant Cognition ◽  
Cognitive Research ◽  
Improved Performance ◽  
The Right

Working memory allows people to manipulate information in support of ongoing tasks and provides a work space for cognitive processes such as learning, reasoning, and decision making. How well working memory works depends, in part, on effort. Someone who pays attention at the right time and place will have better memory and improved performance on memory tasks. In adult cognitive research, participants’ devotion of maximal task-focused effort is often taken for granted, but in infant studies, researchers cannot make that assumption. In this article, we showcase how pupillometry can provide an easy-to-obtain physiological measure of cognitive effort that allows us to better understand infants’ emerging abilities. In our work, we use pupillometry to measure trial-by-trial fluctuations of effort, establishing that, just as in adults, such fluctuations influence how well infants can encode information in visual working memory. We hope that by using physiological measures such as pupil dilation, there will be a renewed effort to investigate the interaction between infants’ attentive states and cognition.

Reexamining visual cognition in human infants: On the necessity of representation

2001 ◽  
Vol 24 (5) ◽  
pp. 1003-1004
Author(s):  
Matthew Schlesinger
Keyword(s):  
Embodied Cognition ◽  
Visual Cognition ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Infant Cognition ◽  
Human Infants ◽  
Classical View ◽  
Young Infants ◽  
The World

The sensorimotor account of vision proposed by O'Regan & Noë (O&N) challenges the classical view of visual cognition as a process of mentally representing the world. Many infant cognition researchers would probably disagree. I describe the surprising ability of young infants to represent and reason about the physical world, and ask how this capacity can be explained in non-representational terms. As a first step toward answering this question, I suggest that recent models of embodied cognition may help illustrate a way of escaping the representational trap.

Elaborating the role of reflection and individual differences in the study of folk-economic beliefs

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Arceneaux
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Individual Differences ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Behavioral Responses ◽  
History Of ◽  
Economic Beliefs

AbstractIntuitions guide decision-making, and looking to the evolutionary history of humans illuminates why some behavioral responses are more intuitive than others. Yet a place remains for cognitive processes to second-guess intuitive responses – that is, to be reflective – and individual differences abound in automatic, intuitive processing as well.

A cognitive approach to cumulative technological culture is useful and necessary but only if it also applies to other species

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thibaud Gruber
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Learning Processes ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Technological Culture ◽  
Social Learning Processes

Abstract The debate on cumulative technological culture (CTC) is dominated by social-learning discussions, at the expense of other cognitive processes, leading to flawed circular arguments. I welcome the authors' approach to decouple CTC from social-learning processes without minimizing their impact. Yet, this model will only be informative to understand the evolution of CTC if tested in other cultural species.

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