Coupled oscillator dynamics of vocal turn-taking in monkeys
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Cooperation is central to human communication. The foundation of cooperative verbal communication is taking turns to speak. Given the universality of turn-taking, it is natural to ask how it evolved. We used marmoset monkeys to explore whether another primate species exhibits cooperative vocal communication by taking turns. Marmosets share with humans a cooperative breeding strategy and volubility. Cooperative care behaviors are thought to scaffold prosocial cognitive processes. Moreover, marmosets and other callitrichid primates are very vocal and readily exchange vocalizations with conspecifics. By measuring the natural statistics of marmoset vocal exchanges, we observed that they take turns in extended sequences and show that this vocal turn-taking has as its foundation dynamics characteristic of coupled oscillators--one that is similar to the dynamics proposed for human conversational turn-taking. As marmoset monkeys are on a different branch of the evolutionary tree that led to humans, our data demonstrate convergent evolution of vocal cooperation. Perhaps more importantly, our data offer a plausible alternative scenario to "gestural origin" hypotheses for how human cooperative vocal communication could have evolved.
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Marmoset monkeys exhibit vocal turn-taking behavior with similar patterns of phase-locking and entrainment as in human communication.
“Doing so with marmoset monkeys revealed vocal turn-taking behavior with similar patterns of phase-locking and entrainment as in human communication”
From Neuroscience Needs Behavior: Correcting a Reductionist Bias (2017) · cites this paper as Takahashi et al., 2013
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Neuroscience Needs Behavior: Correcting a Reductionist Bias
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- Authors
- Takahashi, D. Y., Narayanan, D. Z., & Ghazanfar, A. A.
- Affiliations
- Princeton University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Takahashi, Daniel Y.
- Ghazanfar, Asif A.
- Venue
- Current Biology
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2013-11
- Volume
- 23
- Issue
- 21
- Pages
- 2162-2168
- ISSN
- 0960-9822 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2010352021
- Cited by
- 257
- References
- 46
- Citations by year
- 2026: 20 · 2025: 22 · 2024: 16 · 2023: 15 · 2022: 24 · 2021: 13 · 2020: 13 · 2019: 24 · 2018: 24 · 2017: 19 · 2016: 29 · 2015: 26 · 2014: 10 · 2013: 2
- FWCI
- 17.07
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Current Biology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Developmental Biology › Animal Vocal Communication and Behavior
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Primate Behavior and Ecology
- Social Sciences › Cultural Studies › Language and cultural evolution
- Keywords
- vocal turn-taking, marmoset, coupled oscillators, convergent evolution, cooperative breeding
- MeSH terms
- Acoustics, Animals, Animal Communication, Callithrix, Cooperative Behavior, Female, Male, Sound Spectrography, Tape Recording
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