Monkeys Recognise Bad Grammar (via BBC News)
The monkeys were not trained to respond to specific words, but they were familiarised with a pattern - a particular prefix, or a suffix. “In the prefixation condition, they heard ‘shoy-bi’, ‘shoy-la’, ‘shoy-ro’ and so on,” explained Ansgar Endress, lead author of the study. “The idea is that they get used to the pattern if you play it long enough.” The “suffixation” group heard words with a changing first syllable, this time with the suffix, “shoy”, kept consistent - such as “bi-shoy” and “la-shoy”.
The team played recordings of these “familiarisation” words to the animals for half an hour. The following day, the monkeys were tested. The researchers played them “new” words that were either consistent with the pattern they had heard before - with “shoy” in the right place - or inconsistent with the familiar pattern.
“We simply measured how often the monkeys looked to the speaker when we played the items,” said Dr Endress. “If they got used to, or bored by, the pattern, then they might be more interested in items that violate (it) - because they are something new - than in items that are consistent with the pattern.” Marc Hauser, who was also involved in this study, told BBC News that the results showed how human language had incorporated memory processes that were not “language-specific”. “Simple temporal ordering is shared with non-human animals,” he said.
