Evidence for compositionality in baboons (Papio papio) through the test case of negation

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 12; no. 1; pp. 19181 - 12
• Main Authors: Dautriche, Isabelle, Buccola, Brian, Berthet, Melissa, Fagot, Joel, Chemla, Emmanuel
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 10.11.2022; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 631/181/1403/2473; 631/477/2811; 631/601/18; Animals; Associative learning; Bias; Cognitive science; Cues; Experiments; Humanities and Social Sciences; Language; Learning; multidisciplinary; Papio; Papio papio; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Semantics; Visual stimuli; Evolution of language; Human behaviour; Animal behaviour

Can non-human animals combine abstract representations much like humans do with language? In particular, can they entertain a compositional representation such as ‘not blue’? Across two experiments, we demonstrate that baboons ( Papio papio ) show a capacity for compositionality. Experiment 1 showed...