Action at a distance: dependency sensitivity in a New World primate.
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.
Department of Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna, , Althanstrasse, 14, Vienna 1090, Austria.
Andrea
A
Ravignani
Ruth-Sophie
RS
Sonnweber
Nina
N
Stobbe
W Tecumseh
WT
Fitch
D000819:Animal Communication; D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D008037:Linguistics; D008954:Models, Biological; D010465:Perception; D010897:Pitch Discrimination; D012453:Saimiri / Q000502:physiology*; D013016:Sound; D013045:Species Specificity; D014741:Video Recording
New World monkey; computation; language; music; pattern; perception