Taking turns: bridging the gap between human and animal communication

TY - JOUR

T1 - Taking turns: bridging the gap between human and animal communication

AU - Pika, Simone

AU - Wilkinson, Ray

AU - Kendrick, Kobin H.

AU - Vernes, Sonja C.

N1 - © Authors, 2018

PY - 2018/6/6

Y1 - 2018/6/6

N2 - Language, humans’ most distinctive trait, still remains a ‘mystery’ for evolutionary theory. It is underpinned by a universal infrastructure—cooperative turn-taking—which has been suggested as an ancient mechanism bridging the existing gap between the articulate human species and their inarticulate primate cousins. However, we know remarkably little about turn-taking systems of non-human animals, and methodological confounds have often prevented meaningful cross-species comparisons. Thus, the extent to which cooperative turn-taking is uniquely human or represents a homologous and/or analogous trait is currently unknown. The present paper draws attention to this promising research avenue by providing an overview of the state of the art of turn-taking in four animal taxa—birds, mammals, insects and anurans. It concludes with a new comparative framework to spur more research into this research domain and to test which elements of the human turn-taking system are shared across species and taxa.

AB - Language, humans’ most distinctive trait, still remains a ‘mystery’ for evolutionary theory. It is underpinned by a universal infrastructure—cooperative turn-taking—which has been suggested as an ancient mechanism bridging the existing gap between the articulate human species and their inarticulate primate cousins. However, we know remarkably little about turn-taking systems of non-human animals, and methodological confounds have often prevented meaningful cross-species comparisons. Thus, the extent to which cooperative turn-taking is uniquely human or represents a homologous and/or analogous trait is currently unknown. The present paper draws attention to this promising research avenue by providing an overview of the state of the art of turn-taking in four animal taxa—birds, mammals, insects and anurans. It concludes with a new comparative framework to spur more research into this research domain and to test which elements of the human turn-taking system are shared across species and taxa.

U2 - 10.1098/rspb.2018.0598

DO - 10.1098/rspb.2018.0598

M3 - Article

SN - 0962-8452

VL - 285

JO - Proceedings of the royal society b-Biological sciences

JF - Proceedings of the royal society b-Biological sciences

IS - 1880

M1 - 20180598

ER -