title: Experiments on the emergence of human communication.
abstract: Children learn language from their parents and then use the acquired system throughout the rest of their life with little change. At least that is commonly assumed. But a recent paper by Galantucci adds to the growing evidence that adults (and children) are able to create and negotiate complex communication systems from scratch and relatively quickly, without a prior model. This raises questions of what cognitive mechanisms are implied in this joint construction of communication systems, and what the implications are for the origins of human language.
authors.affiliation: Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, 1050 Brussels, Belgium; Sony CSL Paris, 6 rue Amyot, 75005 Paris, France. steels@arti.vub.ac.be
authors.forename: Luc
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Steels
mesh_terms: D003142:Communication; D006801:Humans; D007804:Language Development