Early development of turn-taking with parents shapes vocal acoustics in infant marmoset monkeys

• Published in: Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B. Biological sciences Vol. 371; no. 1693; p. 20150370
• Main Authors: Takahashi, Daniel Y., Fenley, Alicia R., Ghazanfar, Asif A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England The Royal Society 05.05.2016
• Subjects: Animals; Callithrix - physiology; Callithrix - psychology; Communicative Pragmatics; Female; Language Evolution; Male; Mother–infant; Parenting; Primate Vocal Development; Speech Evolution; Vocal Learning; Vocalization, Animal; language evolution; mother–infant; primate vocal development; vocal learning; speech evolution; communicative pragmatics
• ISSN: 0962-8436; 1471-2970
• DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2015.0370

In humans, vocal turn-taking is a ubiquitous form of social interaction. It is a communication system that exhibits the properties of a dynamical system: two individuals become coupled to each other via acoustic exchanges and mutually affect each other. Human turn-taking develops during the first year of life. We investigated the development of vocal turn-taking in infant marmoset monkeys, a New World species whose adult vocal behaviour exhibits the same universal features of human turn-taking. We find that marmoset infants undergo the same trajectory of change for vocal turn-taking as humans, and do so during the same life-history stage. Our data show that turn-taking by marmoset infants depends on the development of self-monitoring, and that contingent parental calls elicit more mature-sounding calls from infants. As in humans, there was no evidence that parental feedback affects the rate of turn-taking maturation. We conclude that vocal turn-taking by marmoset monkeys and humans is an instance of convergent evolution, possibly as a result of pressures on both species to adopt a cooperative breeding strategy and increase volubility.