ArticlePsychonomic bulletin & review2017
Atypical birdsong and artificial languages provide insights into how communication systems are shaped by learning, use, and transmission.
Article in Psychonomic bulletin & review, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Cumulative cultural evolution and mechanisms for cultural selection in wild bird songs.Nature communications · 2022Article
- Evidence for cumulative cultural evolution in bird song.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- The Role of the Learner in the Cultural Evolution of Vocalizations.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- Social learning exploits the available auditory or visual cues.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Linear grammar as a possible stepping-stone in the evolution of language.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2017Review
- Empirical approaches to the study of language evolution.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2017Review
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Abstract
In this article, I argue that a comparative approach focusing on the cognitive capacities and behavioral mechanisms that underlie vocal learning in songbirds and humans can provide valuable insights into the evolutionary origins of language. The experimental approaches I discuss use abnormal song and atypical linguistic input to study the processes of individual learning, social interaction, and cultural transmission. Atypical input places increased learning and communicative pressure on learners, so exploring how they respond to this type of input provides a particularly clear picture of the biases and constraints at work during learning and use. Furthermore, simulating the cultural transmission of these unnatural communication systems in the laboratory informs us about how learning and social biases influence the structure of communication systems in the long run. Findings based on these methods suggest fundamental similarities in the basic social-cognitive mechanisms underlying vocal learning in birds and humans, and continuing research promises insights into the uniquely human mechanisms and into how human cognition and social behavior interact, and ultimately impact on the evolution of language.
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