Social Cognition and the Evolution of Language: Constructing Cognitive Phylogenies

“Since Premack and Woodruff’s (Premack and Woodruff, 1978) seminal paper asked ‘‘Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind?’’”

“Also, the discovery of mirror neurons (neurons that fire both when monkeys watch another animal perform a goal-directed action and when they perform the same action) in rhesus monkeys suggests that they possess the neural framework for the matching system of imitation (Ferrari et al., 2009; Rizzolatti and Craighero, 2…”

“Human cultural evolution also allows for accumulation of good ideas, a fact that is central to human cultural progress (Tomasello, 1999).”

“…elements of a TOM in some nonhuman primates, striking differences exist from the human system of understanding mental states and intentional agency (Csibra and Gergely, 2006, 2009; Tomasello et al., 2005), especially in their use of such understanding in communication (Seyfarth and Cheney, 2005).”

“However, research on the chameleon effect in human adults (Chartrand and Bargh, 1999; van Baaren et al., 2009) and ‘‘overcopying’’ in children (Whiten et al., 2009) suggests that, even when control is limited, imitation can have systematic and far-reaching effects on cooperative behavior and the…”

“Mirror Neurons and Language Evolution Our third example involves mirror neurons, one of the more fascinating neuroscientific findings in the last few decades (di Pellegrino et al., 1992; Rizzolatti and Craighero, 2004).”

“Finally, social cognition must be intact to appropriately decode verbal languag”

“The social intelligence hypothesis proposes that increased social complexity (frequently indexed by social group size) was the major selective pressure in primate cognitive evolution (6, 44, 48, 50, 87, 115, 120, 125 – 141).”

“Humansarenot theonly species inwhichcommunicative learning is affected by social interaction (see Fitch et al., 2010, for review).”

“, emotional state), humans can use language to basically communicate about any concept (131).”

“Based on these findings, many investigators hypothesized that the evolution of spoken language in humans was associated with the formation of a direct projection from LMC to nucleus ambiguus in humans (Kuypers, 1958a; Kirzinger and Jurgens, 1982; Iwatsubo et al., 1990; Jurgens, 2002; Khedr and Aref, 2002; Jarvis, 2004…”

“One human trait poorly back-translatable into animals is fully syntactical, recursive and abstract language (Fitch et al., 2010; Poeppel, 2012), of which a loss of fluent production (alogia) characterises NS (Table 1) (Foussias et al.”

“Even in the case of human language, which is much richer in its content, the meaning behind a word or sentence is often highly contextual (Dunbar, 2003; Fitch et al., 2010).”

“This evidence opens up the possibility that voice areas may have a longer evolutionary history than previously proposed [10], dating back to the common ancestor of dogs and humans some 100 million years ago [4], although convergent evolution cannot be excluded [37].”

“Over the last two decades the diversity of species under study has grown further and has generated renewed interest in testing hypotheses regarding how cognitive differences across species might have evolved (Shettleworth 2009, 2010; Fitch et al. 2010).”

“This is no different in language than in, for example, vision (Hubel, 1988; Marr, 1982), music (Peretz & Coltheart, 2003), aesthetics (Leder, Belke, Oeberst, & Augustin, 2004), or social cognition (Fitch et al., 2010).”

“Given the central importance of learning referential words in language, a key question is whether this is a uniquely human trait [6, 7].”

“…2011; Arriaga et al., 2012; Hammerschmidt et al., 2012; Portfors and Perkel, 2014) and this is thought to be attributed to the absence or very sparse presence of a forebrain pathway that in vocal learners, like songbirds and humans, is well-developed (Fitch et al., 2010; Arriaga and Jarvis, 2013).”

“…as one of the key neural transformations in the evolution of spoken-language and learned song (Deacon, 2007; Fischer & Hammerschmidt, 2010; Fitch et al., 2010; Jarvis, 2004; Jürgens et al., 1982; Kirzinger & Jürgens, 1982; Okanoya, 2004; Simonyan & Horwitz, 2011; Simonyan & Jürgens, 2003).”

“Outside of primates, however, skillful vocal control can be learned in a limited group of species including songbirds, parrots, cetaceans, bats, and elephants (Janik and Slater, 1997; Jarvis, 2004; Fitch et al., 2010).”

“The laryngeal motor cortex: the hypothesis The absence of laryngeal representation in the primary motor cortex and of direct (monosynaptic) motor cortical connections with brainstem laryngeal motoneurons in non-human primates has been puzzling for several years [2 ,52–55].”

“These are known as phylogenetic comparative methods and they have already been utilized to test possible scenarios regarding the evolution of inhibitory control [11], language [16] and general intelligence [17] within the primate clade.”

“The direct projection to the brainstem vocal MN is considered critical for the evolution of vocal learning and spoken language, as it is either absent or very sparse in vocal non-learners [2,42,87–92].”

“If, on the other hand, 41 similarities are found between humans and more distantly related species, these features represent 42 analogs and hence do not give any information on the phylogenetic origins of the feature, but can 43 help elucidate the environmental or social conditions favourable to its convergent evoluti…”

“…dogs and humans went through convergent evolution, researchers have suggested that dogs might be an additional, and in some respect, more informative model when investigating the evolution of human social behavior and cognition (Miklósi et al., 2004; Hare and Tomasello, 2005; Fitch et al., 2010).”

“Language can be considered a system that permits the expression of thoughts as signals and the reverse, the interpretation of such signals as thoughts (Fitch et al., 2010).”

“…understand beliefs of others is argued to have underpinned the evolution of complex social cognition phenomena in humans, including language, which relies on a set of communally shared symbols with arbitrary assigned meanings (Tomasello et al. 2005; Tomasello and Carpenter 2007; Fitch et al. 2010).”

“As social animals, we constantly move in an environment where we actively perceive others’ movements as a form of meaningful behavior (Blakemore and Decety, 2001; Gallese et al., 2007; Fitch et al., 2010).”

“A better understanding of the mechanisms contributing to vocal learning in birds as well as investigations of vocal learning in other mammalian species such as seals (Fitch et al., 2010) will be important to investigate such a scenario.”

“Gaze following into distant space seems common in the animal kingdom and has been shown in five taxa of mammals, in three taxa of birds and a tortoise (see [32,33] for review).”

“When this approach is taken with cognitive traits it can be termed “cognitive phylogenetics” (Fitch et al. 2010).”

“Although gaze following seems to be elicited in a reflexive manner and exists in many vertebrates (review in Fitch et al. 2010), including solitary reptiles (Wilkinson et al. 2010), the following of others’ gaze direction into distant space or around barriers seems to be a less common and more…”

“More precisely, Fong et al. (2003) listed some “human-like” behavioral and cognitive features that such socially interactive robots should possess.”

“Partly in recognition of this, some current research focuses on the extent to which great ape communication shares the same social-cognitive basis as linguistic communication (Fitch, Huber, and Bugnyar 2010; Tomasello 2008).”

“For review of the importance of gaze and visual cueing in the evolution of cognition and language see (Fitch et al., 2010).”

“…that article, researchers in the fields of comparative cognition, animal psychology, cognitive archaeology, and cognitive biology (Shettleworth 2009; Fitch et al. 2010) have made considerable advances in tackling different cognitive and behavioral elements that form the layered system of cognition.”

“The second and third authors contributed equally to this article.”

“On the basis of current evidence, it now seems unlikely that our ability to assess others’ psychological states evolved entirely de novo after humans split from other apes (Call & Tomasello 2008, Fitch et al. 2010, Rosati et al. 2010).”

“Although both views predict laterality for faces in humans (Fitch et al., 2010), the fundamental premise that differs between these hypotheses is that according to the former theory a similar degree of laterality is expected when the same non-linguistic face stimuli are presented to monkeys or humans.”

“In the context of vocal learning, the most pressing question is whether elephants possess direct connections between telencephalic neurons and the primary vocal motor neurons in the brainstem controlling the vocal apparatus (following the Kuypers/Jürgens hypothesis) [5–9].”

“Integrating approaches to research and examining cognition and communication as interrelated traits will provide a more comprehensive understanding of how the social environment may shape specializations of behavior and the brain to support social living (Dunbar 2003; Connor 2007; Tomasello 2008; Fitch et al. 2010; Pi…”

“The Kuypers-Jurgens hypothesis proposes that the direct connection between the LMC and laryngeal motor neurons is required for vocal learning [94].”

“Whether ravens have indeed mastered displacement, and if so how they accomplish it, is currently under investigation [59].”

“Thus, just as sociality is proposed to drive the evolution of intelligence and cognitive specialization (Byrne & Whiten, 1989; Jolly, 1966), it may also contribute to the origin and maintenance of vocal learning abilities (Dunbar, 2003; Fitch et al., 2010; McComb & Semple, 2005; Pinker, 2010).”

“The study of similarities and differences in their cognition can inform about homologies and analogies of cognitive mechanisms across the amniotes [5].”

“This bottom-up approach, seeking to establish ‘‘cognitive phylogenies’’ (Fitch et al. 2010), focuses on the fundamental capacities underlying larger cognitive phenomena and is more in line with the Darwinian logic of descent (Hauser et al.”

“…or spoken-language pathway (blue arrows in Figure 3b,d) (Friederici et al. 2017) and (ii) a direct projection from the vocal motor cortex to brainstem vocal motor neurons that control the muscles to produce song and speech (green arrows in Figure 3a,b) (Fitch et al. 2010, Petkov & Jarvis 2012).”

“But other differences, for example in the social cognition involved in semantics and pragmatics [22] and vocal learning [23] also needed to evolve after hominins diverged from our last common ancestor with chimpanzees around six million years ago.”

“Verbal communication affects social behavior [16].”

“…of descent-with-modification (De Waal & Ferrari, 2010; Hauser et al., 2002), which opens up the possibility of constructing ‘cognitive phylogenies’ (Fitch et al., 2010); 3) A reduction of the theoretical machinery needed to account for the fundamental properties of grammar within linguistics— a…”

“Only humans code and decode knowledge about the (social) world by means of symbolic language systems (Fitch et al., 2010).”

“This connection is similar to humans, where the face motor cortex makes a direct projection to the mammalian analog of brainstem vocal motor neurons, nucleus ambiguus (Amb) [2,6,7,8,11,12].”

“By examining the distribution of these mechanisms, researchers can determine which are shared and which are unique, and begin to piece together a putative history of cognitive evolution (Fitch et al. 2010).”

“We, furthermore, embrace the idea that feelings may have evolved convergently in multiple lineages and that the comparative study of these taxa will help us shed light on the selection pressures that may have shaped the evolution of both emotions and feelings (Fitch et al., 2010; Massen, 2020).”

“Earlier comparative data have also suggested that the skill is present across mammals (Fitch et al. 2010).”

“Language communication from an early life stage is an essential tool for bidirectional information transmission (Fitch et al., 2010; Kuhl, 2011), and is clearly delayed in certain ASD subtypes.”

“Studies have demonstrated the capacity of f0 modulation [28,30] through vocal imitation in some species (elephants: [31,32]; bats: [33]).”

“The answer to these questions is related to the animal mindreading debate.”