--- abstract: "Humans, but no other animal, make meaningful use of spoken language. What is unclear, however, is whether this capacity depends on a unique constellation of perceptual and neurobiological mechanisms, or whether a subset of such mechanisms are shared with other organisms. To explore this problem, we conducted parallel experiments on human newborns and cotton-top tamarin monkeys to assess their ability to discriminate unfamiliar languages. Using a habituation-dishabituation procedure, we show that human newborns and tamarins can discriminate sentences from Dutch and Japanese, but not if the sentences are played backwards. Moreover, the cues for discrimination are not present in backward speech. This suggests that the human newborns' tuning to certain properties of speech relies on general processes of the primate auditory system." altloc: - http://www.ehess.fr/centres/lscp/persons/ramus/science00.pdf chapter: ~ commentary: ~ commref: ~ confdates: ~ conference: ~ confloc: ~ contact_email: ~ creators_id: [] creators_name: - family: Ramus given: Franck honourific: '' lineage: '' - family: Hauser given: Marc D. honourific: '' lineage: '' - family: Miller given: Cory honourific: '' lineage: '' - family: Morris given: Dylan honourific: '' lineage: '' - family: Mehler given: Jacques honourific: '' lineage: '' date: 2000-04 date_type: published datestamp: 2000-12-19 department: ~ dir: disk0/00/00/11/58 edit_lock_since: ~ edit_lock_until: ~ edit_lock_user: ~ editors_id: [] editors_name: [] eprint_status: archive eprintid: 1158 fileinfo: /style/images/fileicons/application_pdf.png;/1158/3/tamarin99.pdf full_text_status: public importid: ~ institution: ~ isbn: ~ ispublished: pub issn: ~ item_issues_comment: [] item_issues_count: 0 item_issues_description: [] item_issues_id: [] item_issues_reported_by: [] item_issues_resolved_by: [] item_issues_status: [] item_issues_timestamp: [] item_issues_type: [] keywords: language discrimination rhythm comparative speech perception tamarin newborn evolution lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:54:27 latitude: ~ longitude: ~ metadata_visibility: show note: ~ number: 5464 pagerange: 349-351 pubdom: FALSE publication: Science publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science refereed: TRUE referencetext: | 1. N. Chomsky, Language and Problems of Knowledge. (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1988). 2. S. Pinker, The Language Instinct. (William Morrow and Company, Inc., New York, 1994). 3. A. Doupe, P. Kuhl, Ann. Rev. Neurosci. 22, 567 (1999) 4. A. Ghazanfar, M. D. Hauser, Trends in Cognitive Science 3, 377 (1999). 5. E. S. Spelke, E. L. Newport, in Handbook of Child Psychology, Volume 1: Theoretical Models of Human Development R. M. Lerner, Ed. (Wiley, New York, 1998) pp. 275-340. 6. P. D. Eimas, E. R. Siqueland, P. W. Jusczyk, J. Vigorito, Science 171, 303 (1971). 7. J. Bertoncini, J. Mehler, Infant Behavior and Development 4, 247 (1981). 8. J. Bertoncini, C. Floccia, T. Nazzi, J. Mehler, Language and Speech 38, 311 (1995). 9. R. Bijeljac-Babic, J. Bertoncini, J. Mehler, Developmental Psychology 29, 711 (1993). 10. J. Mehler, et al., Cognition 29, 143 (1988). 11. T. Nazzi, J. Bertoncini, J. Mehler, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 24, 756 (1998). 12. H. J. Neville, D. L. Mills, Mental retardation and developmental disabilities research reviews 3, 282 (1997). 13. D. Perani, et al., NeuroReport 7, 2439 (1996). 14. G. Ehret, B. Haack, Naturwissenshaften, 68, 208 (1981). 15. R. A. Wyttenbach, M. L. May, R. R. Hoy, Science 273, 1542 (1996). 16. P. K. Kuhl, J. D. Miller, Science 190, 69 (1975). 17. P. Kuhl, in Categorical perception: The groundwork of cognition S. Harnad, Ed. (Cambridge University Press, 1987) pp. 355-386. 18. M. D. Hauser, The evolution of communication (Bradford Books/MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1996). 19. T. Dutoit, V. Pagel, N. Pierret, F. Bataille, O. van der Vrecken, The MBROLA Project: Towards a set of high-quality speech synthesizers free of use for non-commercial purposes, ICSLP'96, Philadelphia (1996). 20. F. Ramus, J. Mehler, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 105, 512 (1999). 21. A. Christophe, E. Dupoux, J. Bertoncini, J. Mehler, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 95, 1570 (1994). 25. P. W. Jusczyk, D. B. Pisoni, J. Mullenix, Cognition 43, 253 (1992). relation_type: [] relation_uri: [] reportno: ~ rev_number: 12 series: ~ source: ~ status_changed: 2007-09-12 16:36:41 subjects: - bio-ani-cog - ling-phono succeeds: 870 suggestions: ~ sword_depositor: ~ sword_slug: ~ thesistype: ~ title: Language discrimination by human newborns and by cotton-top tamarin monkeys type: journalp userid: 431 volume: 288