Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id EAA11333 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 1 Mar 2000 04:27:08 GMT Subject: Fwd: Baboons Suggest Language Origins Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 23:25:44 -0500 x-sender: wsmith1@camail2.harvard.edu x-mailer: Claris Emailer 2.0v3, Claritas Est Veritas From: "Wade T.Smith" <wade_smith@harvard.edu> To: "Memetics Discussion List" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Message-ID: <20000301042516.AAA13576@camailp.harvard.edu@[204.96.32.203]> Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
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From Discovery Online at:
http://www.discovery.com/news/briefs/20000228/animals_baboon.html .
Feb. 28, 2000 -- Researchers have detected a message in the calls of
baboons lost in the wild: primates may lack a key psychological mechanism
necessary for language.
According to Drew Rendall, lead author of a study in the March Journal of
Comparative Psychology, baboons can't understand how their vocalizations
will affect others -- a finding that suggests a fundamental difference in
the psychology underlying human and primate communications.
Rendall, an assistant psychology professor at the University of
Lethbridge
in Alberta, Canada, spent 14 months observing communications between lost
baboons and their group in Botswana's Moremi Game Reserve.
The baboons, Rendall found, didn't respond vocally to calls from lost
members of their group. Sounds presumed to be answers turned out to be
distress calls from other lost baboons, he says.
Even mothers who heard their lost infants' wails didn't call back in
reassurance, though they sometimes tried to locate their children by
rushing toward their calls, says Rendall.
The mother baboons were concerned, he says, but couldn't comprehend that
answers might influence their infants by calming them or informing them
of
their mothers' whereabouts.
The baboons, says Rendall, lack what psychologists call the "theory of
mind," an understanding that others have minds with thoughts, knowledge
and
perceptions different from their own.
"Part of the impetus for language," he says," is the assumption that you
know something that someone else doesn't already know."
In human children, theory of mind becomes evident around age 3 or 4, and
is
strongly linked to the emergence of language.
For the past decade, researchers investigating why language is unique to
humans have failed to find evidence of theory of mind in primates.
However, critics have questioned those results because tests were
conducted
in the lab and not under real-world conditions.
"It's great people are trying to do cognitive research in the wild," says
Sue Parker, a Sonoma State University anthropologist who studies the
evolution of cognitive development in primates.
While the findings support previous lab studies, both Parker and Rendall
cite the need for further field research, especially among chimpanzees,
mankind's closest living relatives.
Rendall adds, "Studying chimps could point to when (in evolutionary
terms)
theory of mind emerged in humans."
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