Sensitivity to dependencies (correspondences between distant items) in sensory stimuli plays a crucial role in human music and language. Here, we show that squirrel monkeys (Saimiri sciureus) can detect abstract, non-adjacent dependencies in auditory stimuli. Monkeys discriminated between tone sequences containing a dependency and those lacking it, and generalized to previously unheard pitch classes and novel dependency distances. This constitutes the first pattern learning study where artificial stimuli were designed with the species' communication system in mind. These results suggest that the ability to recognize dependencies represents a capability that had already evolved in humans' last common ancestor with squirrel monkeys, and perhaps before. © 2013 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.

Action at a distance: Dependency sensitivity in a New World primate / Ravignani, A.; Sonnweber, R. -S.; Stobbe, N.; Fitch, W. T.. - In: BIOLOGY LETTERS. - ISSN 1744-9561. - 9:6(2013). [10.1098/rsbl.2013.0852]

Action at a distance: Dependency sensitivity in a New World primate

Ravignani A.
;
2013

Abstract

Sensitivity to dependencies (correspondences between distant items) in sensory stimuli plays a crucial role in human music and language. Here, we show that squirrel monkeys (Saimiri sciureus) can detect abstract, non-adjacent dependencies in auditory stimuli. Monkeys discriminated between tone sequences containing a dependency and those lacking it, and generalized to previously unheard pitch classes and novel dependency distances. This constitutes the first pattern learning study where artificial stimuli were designed with the species' communication system in mind. These results suggest that the ability to recognize dependencies represents a capability that had already evolved in humans' last common ancestor with squirrel monkeys, and perhaps before. © 2013 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
2013
Computation; Language; Music; New World monkey; Pattern; Perception
01 Pubblicazione su rivista::01a Articolo in rivista
Action at a distance: Dependency sensitivity in a New World primate / Ravignani, A.; Sonnweber, R. -S.; Stobbe, N.; Fitch, W. T.. - In: BIOLOGY LETTERS. - ISSN 1744-9561. - 9:6(2013). [10.1098/rsbl.2013.0852]
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11573/1682523
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