3/ This finding suggests that the ability to parse events in terms of agents and patients isn’t unique to humans – it’s a shared feature of hominid cognition with deep evolutionary roots and a potential pre-requist for human language 🗣️
2/ The results? Both humans and a highly motivated chimpanzee showed longer response times when event roles switched, indicating that they both spontaneously encode these roles, even when it’s not required by the task.
1/ When we observe social interactions, we quickly understand 'who does what to whom' – a core feature of human cognition. This ability to assign event roles (agent vs. patient) is crucial for understanding complex social dynamics. But how ancient is this skill?
🧠🦍 Did you know? Like humans, chimpanzees automatically process 'who did what to whom' – a potential precursor for language. 👇 Check what we found in our new paper published in @openmindjournal.bsky.social doi.org/10.1162/opmi...
The loss of a legend- Kanzi, the language-competent bonobo, has died age 44. Kanzi was exceptional in so many ways and offered us profound insights into the linguistic & cognitive capacities of great apes. He has taught us so much and will be hugely missed. www.apeinitiative.org/remembering-...
We're looking for equine stakeholders (horse owners, breeders, stable managers, vets etc) to fill in this short survey, to help us assess feasibility of a possible horse welfare tool. Please share! shorturl.at/PIG2s
Hot off the press! Is there a pre-linguistic basis for event role attribution? In our new paper out in PLoS Biology, we take a comparative eye tracking approach to explore temporal gaze distribution to agents and patients in dyadic interactions tinyurl.com/mryk7kmb
