ArticleScientific reports2020
Baboons (Papio papio) Process a Context-Free but Not a Context-Sensitive Grammar.
Article in Scientific reports, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 17 citations in OpenAlex.
- A non-verbal process dissociation procedure to disentangle explicit from implicit sequence learning.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2026Article
- Do Humans Use Push-Down Stacks When Learning or Producing Center-Embedded Sequences?Cognitive science · 2025Article
- Investigating the role of the left inferior frontal gyrus in language evolution: insights from comparative neuroscience.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2025Review
- Cognitive Mechanisms Underlying Recursive Pattern Processing in Human Adults.Cognitive science · 2023Article
- Origins of Hierarchical Logical Reasoning.Cognitive science · 2023Article
- Recursive sequence generation in crows.Science advances · 2022Article
- Sensitivity to geometric shape regularity in humans and baboons: A putative signature of human singularity.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Study of Relationship between Learning and Behavioral Parameters in Mature Male Rhesus Monkeys (Macaca mulatta).Bulletin of experimental biology and medicine · 2021Article
- Statistical learning in domestic chicks is modulated by strain and sex.Scientific reports · 2020Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Language processing involves the ability to master supra-regular grammars, that go beyond the level of complexity of regular grammars. This ability has been hypothesized to be a uniquely human capacity. Our study probed baboons' capacity to learn two supra-regular grammars of different levels of complexity: a context-free grammar generating sequences following a mirror structure (e.g., AB | BA, ABC | CBA) and a context-sensitive grammar generating sequences following a repeat structure (e.g., AB | AB, ABC | ABC), the latter requiring greater computational power to be processed. Fourteen baboons were tested in a prediction task, requiring them to track a moving target on a touchscreen. In distinct experiments, sequences of target locations followed one of the above two grammars, with rare violations. Baboons showed slower response times when violations occurred in mirror sequences, but did not react to violations in repeat sequences, suggesting that they learned the context-free (mirror) but not the context-sensitive (repeat) grammar. By contrast, humans tested with the same task learned both grammars. These data suggest a difference in sensitivity in baboons between a context-free and a context-sensitive grammar.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.