Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.
Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.
Dev Psychobiol. 2021 Jul;63(5):1583-1588. doi: 10.1002/dev.22108. Epub 2021 Apr 7.
The development of the earliest vocalizations of human infants is influenced by social feedback from caregivers. As these vocalizations change, they increasingly elicit such feedback. This pattern of development is in stark contrast to that of our close phylogenetic relatives, Old World monkeys and apes, who produce mature-sounding vocalizations at birth. We put forth a scenario to account for this difference: Humans have a cooperative breeding strategy, which pressures infants to compete for the attention from caregivers. Humans use this strategy because large brained human infants are energetically costly and born altricial. An altricial brain accommodates vocal learning. To test this hypothetical scenario, we present findings from New World marmoset monkeys indicating that, through convergent evolution, this species adopted a largely identical developmental system-one that includes vocal learning and cooperative breeding.
人类婴儿最早的发声发展受到来自照顾者的社会反馈的影响。随着这些发声的变化，它们越来越能引起这种反馈。这种发展模式与我们的近亲，旧世界猴子和猿类，形成了鲜明的对比，后者在出生时就会发出成熟的声音。我们提出了一个解释这种差异的情景：人类有一种合作繁殖的策略，这迫使婴儿竞争照顾者的注意力。人类之所以使用这种策略，是因为大脑较大的人类婴儿在能量上是昂贵的，并且生来就很不成熟。一个不成熟的大脑可以适应声音学习。为了验证这一假设情景，我们提出了新世界狨猴的发现，表明通过趋同进化，该物种采用了一种基本相同的发展系统，包括声音学习和合作繁殖。
