ArticleScience advances2020
Nonadjacent dependency processing in monkeys, apes, and humans.
Article in Science advances, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers.
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Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed.
- Addressing the theory crisis in statistical learning research.NPJ science of learning · 2025Review
- Non-adjacent dependency processing (or lack thereof) in bonobos: an artificial grammar experiment.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- A bounded hierarchy framework for the evolution of syntax.Biology & philosophy · 2025Article
- Investigating the role of the left inferior frontal gyrus in language evolution: insights from comparative neuroscience.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2025Review
- Beyond bigrams: call sequencing in the common marmoset (Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Functional reorganization of brain regions supporting artificial grammar learning across the first half year of life.PLoS biology · 2024Article
- Article
- Nonadjacent dependencies and sequential structure of chimpanzee action during a natural tool-use task.PeerJ · 2024Article
- Sequence representation as an early step in the evolution of language.PLoS computational biology · 2023Article
- Simple questions on simple associations: regularity extraction in non-human primates.Learning & behavior · 2023Article
- Article
- A test of memory for stimulus sequences in great apes.PloS one · 2023Article
- Memory for nonadjacent dependencies in the first year of life and its relation to sleep.Nature communications · 2022Article
- Optionality in animal communication: a novel framework for examining the evolution of arbitrariness.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2022Article
- Innovative multi-material tool use in the pant-hoot display of a chimpanzee.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Recursive sequence generation in crows.Science advances · 2022Article
- Chimpanzees produce diverse vocal sequences with ordered and recombinatorial properties.Communications biology · 2022Article
- Sociality predicts orangutan vocal phenotype.Nature ecology & evolution · 2022Article
- Article
- Orangutan information broadcast via consonant-like and vowel-like calls breaches mathematical models of linguistic evolution.Biology letters · 2021Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
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Abstract
The ability to track syntactic relationships between words, particularly over distances ("nonadjacent dependencies"), is a critical faculty underpinning human language, although its evolutionary origins remain poorly understood. While some monkey species are reported to process auditory nonadjacent dependencies, comparative data from apes are missing, complicating inferences regarding shared ancestry. Here, we examined nonadjacent dependency processing in common marmosets, chimpanzees, and humans using "artificial grammars": strings of arbitrary acoustic stimuli composed of adjacent (nonhumans) or nonadjacent (all species) dependencies. Individuals from each species (i) generalized the grammars to novel stimuli and (ii) detected grammatical violations, indicating that they processed the dependencies between constituent elements. Furthermore, there was no difference between marmosets and chimpanzees in their sensitivity to nonadjacent dependencies. These notable similarities between monkeys, apes, and humans indicate that nonadjacent dependency processing, a crucial cognitive facilitator of language, is an ancestral trait that evolved at least ~40 million years before language itself.
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