Constraints on the lexicons of human languages have cognitive roots present in baboons (Papio papio).
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Chemla E
PROVIDER: S-EPMC6660758 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jul
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Publications
Constraints on the lexicons of human languages have cognitive roots present in baboons (<i>Papio papio</i>).
Chemla Emmanuel E Dautriche Isabelle I Buccola Brian B Fagot Joël J
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20190709 30
Using a pattern extraction task, we show that baboons, like humans, have a learning bias that helps them discover connected patterns more easily than disconnected ones-i.e., they favor rules like "contains between 40% and 80% red" over rules like "contains around 30% red or 100% red." The task was made as similar as possible to a task previously run on humans, which was argued to reveal a bias that is responsible for shaping the lexicons of human languages, both content words (nouns and adjectiv ...[more]
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