Rule learning over consonants and vowels in a non-human animal

Perception studies have shown similarities between humans and other animals in a wide array of language-related processes. However, the components of language that make it uniquely human have not been fully identified. Here we show that nonhuman animals extract rules over speech sequences that are d...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Cognition 2013-02, Vol.126 (2), p.307-312
Main Authors:	de la Mora, Daniela M., Toro, Juan M.
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	Adults Animal cognition Animals Biological and medical sciences Consonants and vowels Discrimination Learning - physiology Experiments Female Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology Humans Language Language Acquisition Learning Learning - physiology Male Perception Phonemes Production and perception of spoken language Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry Psychology. Psychophysiology Rats Rats, Long-Evans Rule-learning Speech Speech perception Speech Perception - physiology Vocabulary Vowels Words
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Summary:	Perception studies have shown similarities between humans and other animals in a wide array of language-related processes. However, the components of language that make it uniquely human have not been fully identified. Here we show that nonhuman animals extract rules over speech sequences that are difficult for humans. Specifically, animals easily learn rules over both consonants and vowels, while humans do it only over vowels. In Experiment 1, rats learned a rule implemented over vowels in CVCVCV nonsense words. In Experiment 2, rats learned the rule when it was implemented over the consonants. In both experiments, rats generalized such knowledge to novel words they had not heard before. Using the same stimuli, human adults learned the rules over the vowels but not over the consonants. These results suggest differences between humans and animals on speech processing might lie on the constraints they face while extracting information from the signal.
ISSN:	0010-0277 1873-7838