LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT. The developmental dynamics of marmoset monkey vocal production.
Human vocal development occurs through two parallel interactive processes that transform infant cries into more mature vocalizations, such as cooing sounds and babbling. First, natural categories of sounds change as the vocal apparatus matures. Second, parental vocal feedback sensitizes infants to certain features of those sounds, and the sounds are modified accordingly. Paradoxically, our closest living ancestors, nonhuman primates, are thought to undergo few or no production-related acoustic changes during development, and any such changes are thought to be impervious to social feedback. Using early and dense sampling, quantitative tracking of acoustic changes, and biomechanical modeling, we showed that vocalizations in infant marmoset monkeys undergo dramatic changes that cannot be solely attributed to simple consequences of growth. Using parental interaction experiments, we found that contingent parental feedback influences the rate of vocal development. These findings overturn decades-old ideas about primate vocalizations and show that marmoset monkeys are a compelling model system for early vocal development in humans.
Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA. Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
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Takahashi
Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA. Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
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Fenley
Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
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Teramoto
Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA. Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
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Narayanan
Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA. Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
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Borjon
Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA. Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
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Holmes
Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA. Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
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Ghazanfar
D000162:Acoustics; D000818:Animals; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D002144:Callithrix / Q000254:growth & development* / Q000502:physiology / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D008297:Male; D008954:Models, Biological; D009129:Muscle Tonus; D014827:Vocal Cords / Q000254:growth & development / Q000502:physiology; D014828:Vocalization, Animal