Grammars of action in human behavior and evolution

Stout, Dietrich; Chaminade, Thierry; Thomik, Andreas A. C.; Apel, Jan; Faisal, A. Aldo

doi:10.1101/281543

Cited by 15 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 64 publications

(86 reference statements)

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“…We see similar long-range power-law structure in the sequential organization of human food preparation and cooking. Cooking is a relatively modern and human-unique behavior [104], however, and may have arisen after humans developed more deeply hierarchical and highly planned tool usage behaviors [84,105]. Yet, we also observe similar long-range organization in the movement patterns of Drosophila and zebrafish, consistent with previous reports for birdsong [2].…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Long-range sequential dependencies precede complex syntactic production in language acquisition

Sainburg¹,

Mai²,

Gentner³

2020

Preprint

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To convey meaning, human language relies on hierarchically organized, long-range relationships spanning words, phrases, sentences, and discourse. The strength of the relationships between sequentially ordered elements of language (e.g., phonemes, characters, words) decays following a power law as a function of sequential distance. To understand the origins of these relationships, we examined long-range statistical structure in the speech of human children at multiple developmental time points, along with non-linguistic behaviors in humans and phylogenetically distant species. Here we show that adult-like power-law statistical dependencies precede the production of hierarchically-organized linguistic structures, and thus cannot be driven solely by these structures. Moreover, we show that similar long-range relationships occur in diverse non-linguistic behaviors across species. We propose that the hierarchical organization of human language evolved to exploit pre-existing long-range structure present in much larger classes of non-linguistic behavior, and that the cognitive capacity to model long-range hierarchical relationships preceded language evolution. We call this the Statistical Scaffolding Hypothesis for language evolution.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Long-range sequential dependencies precede complex syntactic production in language acquisition

Sainburg¹,

Mai²,

Gentner³

2020

Preprint

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“…Methods for this study have previously been made available as a preprint 81 and are reproduced here.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Action Grammars of Human Behavior – Measurement, Evolution, and Neural Representation

Stout¹,

Chaminade²,

Apel³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Human behaviors from tool-making to language are thought to rely on a uniquely evolved capacity for hierarchical action sequencing. Testing this idea will require objective, generalizable methods for measuring the structural complexity of real-world behavior. Here we present a data-driven approach for extracting action grammars from basic ethograms, exemplified with respect to the evolutionarily-relevant behavior of stone tool-making. We analyzed sequences from the experimental replication of ~2.5 Mya Oldowan vs. ~0.5 Mya Acheulean tools, finding that, while using the same “alphabet” of elementary actions, Acheulean sequences are quantifiably more complex and Oldowan grammars are a subset of Acheulean grammars. We illustrate the utility of our complexity measures by re-analyzing data from an fMRI study of stone tool-making to identify brain responses to structural complexity. Beyond specific implications regarding the co-evolution of language and technology, this exercise illustrates the general applicability of our method to investigate naturalistic human behavior and cognition.

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“…Finally, performance in unconstrained real-world situations can be related to individual differences and/or experience-related plasticity in neuroanatomical, cognitive, affective, and perceptual-motor traits assessed in the lab (e.g., Hecht et al, 2015;Prat et al, 2020). This will require novel methods for quantifying technological performance (e.g., Pargeter et al, 2019;Stout et al, 2018) but offers a critical links between structure, function, and behavior needed to place variation in a broader evolutionary and developmental frame (Stout and Hecht, 2017).…”

Section: Collaborationmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the psychological origins of tool use

Mangalam

Fragaszy

Wagman

et al. 2022

Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews

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The ubiquity of tool use in human life has generated multiple lines of scientific and philosophical investigation to understand the development and expression of humans' engagement with tools and its relation to other dimensions of human experience. However, existing literature on tool use faces several epistemological challenges in which the same set of questions generate many different answers. At least four critical questions can be identified, which are intimately intertwined-(1) What constitutes tool use? (2) What psychological processes are involved in tool use? (3) Which of these psychological processes are specific to tool use? (4) Which psychological processes involved in tool use are specific to Homo sapiens? To help advance a multidisciplinary scientific understanding of tool use, six author groups representing different academic disciplines (e.g., anthropology, psychology, neuroscience) and different theoretical perspectives respond to each of these questions, and then point to the direction of future work on tool use. We find that while there are marked differences among the responses of the respective author groups to each question, there is a-perhaps surprisingdegree of agreement about many essential concepts and questions. We believe that this interdisciplinary and intertheoretical discussion will foster a more comprehensive understanding of tool use than any one of these perspectives (or any one of these author groups) would (or could) on their own.

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Grammars of action in human behavior and evolution

Cited by 15 publications

References 64 publications

Long-range sequential dependencies precede complex syntactic production in language acquisition

Long-range sequential dependencies precede complex syntactic production in language acquisition

Action Grammars of Human Behavior – Measurement, Evolution, and Neural Representation

On the psychological origins of tool use

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