Labertoniere Dahliane, Wilson Vanessa A D, Pascual-Guàrdia Carla, Skoruppa Katrin, Zuberbühler Klaus
Department of Comparative Cognition, Institute of Biology, University of Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
Institute of Speech and Language Therapy, University of Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
Anim Cogn. 2025 Jul 1;28(1):53. doi: 10.1007/s10071-025-01974-x.
Fast mapping is essential when children acquire language, but whether the required cognition is uniquely human or shared with animals is debated. Although documented in dogs and cats, both species have a history of domestication of social cognition, so that it remains unclear whether fast mapping is naturally present in non-domesticated animals. Here, we used an eye-tracking paradigm to test three species of hominids - gorillas, orangutans and humans - in their ability to rapidly learn to associate novel sounds with objects in their everyday noisy environment. The task was difficult for all participants, but while adult humans showed evidence of fast mapping, we could not detect any sign of learning in the other hominids. These species differences could have trivial causes, such as problems with attention or motivation, but it is also possible that fast mapping requires a preexisting lexicon before becoming an effective learning mechanism, or that it has simply evolved after the shared ancestor of all great apes.
快速映射在儿童习得语言时至关重要，但所需的认知是人类独有的，还是与动物共有的，这一点存在争议。尽管在狗和猫身上有相关记录，但这两个物种都有社会认知驯化的历史，因此尚不清楚快速映射是否天然存在于未驯化的动物中。在这里，我们使用眼动追踪范式来测试三种灵长类动物——大猩猩、红毛猩猩和人类——在日常嘈杂环境中快速学习将新声音与物体联系起来的能力。这项任务对所有参与者来说都很困难，虽然成年人类表现出快速映射的证据，但我们在其他灵长类动物身上没有发现任何学习迹象。这些物种差异可能有微不足道的原因，比如注意力或动机问题，但也有可能快速映射在成为一种有效的学习机制之前需要预先存在的词汇表，或者它只是在所有类人猿的共同祖先之后才进化出来的。
