2023-10-17 16:51:13
MADRID, 17 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
A new study has provided evidence that young chimpanzees are capable of functional vocal flexibility; a known component in human language development.
The ability to produce sounds that can fulfill a variety of functions is essential for learning to speak, but it has long been believed that non-human primates do not share this ability.
Human babies make noises that have specific purposes. Screaming, laughing, and crying, for example, have a rigid purpose and clear emotion. But there are other sounds of freedom of expression, like the previous babbling, which have a more flexible function.
New research has found that infant and juvenile chimpanzees demonstrate similar vocal flexibility, implying that the foundations of speech are rooted in our evolutionary heritage from primates.
Lead author Dr Derry Taylor, from the Department of Psychology at the University of Portsmouth, said it’s a statement: “All living beings communicate, but only humans communicate through language. How this arose is an unsolved mystery within science.
“Until now we had no evidence of functional vocal flexibility in non-human primates from the beginning. This discovery has profound implications for our understanding of the origins of human language.”
The paper, published in iScience, is one of the first systematic studies of early vocal production and function in chimpanzees, according to the authors.
A team from the University of Portsmouth in England, the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland, and Clermont Auvergne University in France filmed 768 vocalizations in 28 young chimpanzees at a sanctuary in Zambia. These included growling, moaning, laughing, screaming, catcalling, barking, squeaking and gasping.
By reviewing and classifying the sounds, they discovered that, like human babies, the chimpanzees produced calls with different affective states (positive, neutral or negative) along with a variety of facial expressions and movements.
These types of flexibly expressed calls, particularly growling, also elicited different responses from social partners depending on how they were expressed with certain behaviors. The findings demonstrated a clear parallel with existing research on human babies.
Co-author Marina Davila-Ross, associate professor of Comparative Psychology at the University of Portsmouth, said: “Many studies comparing apes with human children have assessed them at different ages. to discuss the differences in language development between both species.
“We replicated other research conducted in the United States, which looked at vocal functional flexibility in human infants, to ensure that our research followed a similar methodology and the results could be easily compared.
“These findings contribute to a growing body of literature that challenges conventional beliefs about primate vocal production and emphasizes the need for further comparative studies of development.” to improve our understanding of the evolutionary origins of language.
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