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

Abstract

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 that baboons can entertain negative, compositional, representations: they can learn to associate a cue with iconically related referents (e.g., a blue patch referring to all blue objects), but also to the complement set associated with it (e.g., a blue patch referring to all non-blue objects). Strikingly, Experiment 2 showed that baboons not only learn to associate a cue with iconically related referents, but can learn to associate complex cues (composed of the same cue and an additional visual element) with the complement object set. Thus, they can learn an operation, instantiated by this additional visual element, that can be compositionally combined with previously learned cues. These results significantly reduce any claim that would make the manipulation and combination of abstract representations a solely human privilege.

Iconic Artificial Language Learning: A Conceptual Replication with English Speakers

“…Bowerman and Smith (2022) used iconic stimuli in an iterated communication game to study semantic extension. Finally, though not conceived of as an ALL study, Dautriche, Buccola, Berthet, Fagot, and Chemla (2022) taught simple iconic symbols to Papio papio baboons, finding evidence that baboons can entertain compositional representations, namely, negation structures.…”

Multimodal aspects of sentence comprehension: Do facial and color cues interact with processing negated and affirmative sentences?

“…One fundamental aspect of human language is the ability to negate, which is universally present in all natural languages (e.g., Zeijlstra, 2007). By contrast, the existence of negation in nonhuman species cannot be taken for granted (Cameron, 1991; Dautriche et al, 2022; Schneider et al, 2010). Negation is a complex phenomenon with diverse manifestations.…”