Human laughter, social play, and play vocalizations of non-human primates: an evolutionary approach

Vettin, Julia; Todt, Dietmar

doi:10.1163/1568539053627640

Cited by 71 publications

(20 citation statements)

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“…Human laughter is likely homologous to play vocalizations associated with the open mouth display in a number of primate species (van Hooff, 1972;Provine, 2000;Davila-Ross, Owren, & Zimmermann, 2009;Vettin & Todt, 2005), and analogous to related vocal signals in other social species, such as rats (Panksepp & Burgdorf, 2003) and dogs (Simonet, 2004). Provine (2000) described laughter as evolved from labored breathing during physical play.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The animal nature of spontaneous human laughter

Bryant

Aktipis

2014

Evolution and Human Behavior

176

185

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The animal nature of spontaneous human laughter

Bryant

Aktipis

2014

Evolution and Human Behavior

176

185

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…Unlike language, across taxa, many nonverbal expressive behaviors have clear parallels in other species. Comparative analyses have revealed homologies in play vocalizations across mammals; in humans, this manifests as spontaneous laughter (Davila-Ross, Owren, & Zimmermann, 2009;Gervais & Wilson, 2005;Provine, 2000;Vettin & Todt, 2005). Consistent with this characterization of human laughter as a biologically evolved species-typical feature, laughter appears in every culture, evincing remarkable consistency in form (Provine, 2000).…”

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confidence: 95%

The Perception of Spontaneous and Volitional Laughter Across 21 Societies

et al. 2018

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Laughter is a nonverbal vocalization occurring in every known culture, ubiquitous across all forms of human social interaction. Here, we examined whether listeners around the world, irrespective of their own native language and culture, can distinguish between spontaneous laughter and volitional laughter-laugh types likely generated by different vocal-production systems. Using a set of 36 recorded laughs produced by female English speakers in tests involving 884 participants from 21 societies across six regions of the world, we asked listeners to determine whether each laugh was real or fake, and listeners differentiated between the two laugh types with an accuracy of 56% to 69%. Acoustic analysis revealed that sound features associated with arousal in vocal production predicted listeners' judgments fairly uniformly across societies. These results demonstrate high consistency across cultures in laughter judgments, underscoring the potential importance of nonverbal vocal communicative phenomena in human affiliation and cooperation.

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“…Considerable research has suggested that human infant cry and laughter are closely related in terms of form, function, and brain control mechanisms to species-specific calls of nonhuman primates that may in fact be homologous with cry and laughter in humans (39)(40)(41)(42)(43)(44)(45)(46)(47). The evidence reported here, however, shows that in the "protophones," the infant vocal types that seem to be less related to our primate heritage and arguably more related to speech, emotional expression can change from utterance to utterance.…”

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confidence: 99%

Functional flexibility of infant vocalization and the emergence of language

Oller

Buder

Ramsdell

et al. 2013

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

183

254

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We report on the emergence of functional flexibility in vocalizations of human infants. This vastly underappreciated capability becomes apparent when prelinguistic vocalizations express a full range of emotional content-positive, neutral, and negative. The data show that at least three types of infant vocalizations (squeals, vowel-like sounds, and growls) occur with this full range of expression by 3-4 mo of age. In contrast, infant cry and laughter, which are speciesspecific signals apparently homologous to vocal calls in other primates, show functional stability, with cry overwhelmingly expressing negative and laughter positive emotional states. Functional flexibility is a sine qua non in spoken language, because all words or sentences can be produced as expressions of varying emotional states and because learning conventional "meanings" requires the ability to produce sounds that are free of any predetermined function. Functional flexibility is a defining characteristic of language, and empirically it appears before syntax, word learning, and even earlier-developing features presumed to be critical to language (e.g., joint attention, syllable imitation, and canonical babbling). The appearance of functional flexibility early in the first year of human life is a critical step in the development of vocal language and may have been a critical step in the evolution of human language, preceding protosyntax and even primitive single words. Such flexible affect expression of vocalizations has not yet been reported for any nonhuman primate but if found to occur would suggest deep roots for functional flexibility of vocalization in our primate heritage.esearch on evolution and development of language has been devoted primarily to syntax, the uniquely human capacity to produce well-formed complex sentences (1-4). Additional work has targeted the emergence of simpler communicative structures and thus has shifted attention back in evolutionary time to an earlier possible split of hominins from the primate background. For example, research has considered the presumably earlier evolution of simple sentences or "protosyntax" (5). Other work influenced by recent trends in evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo) (6, 7) has focused on infrastructure for language, invoking capabilities logically more foundational even than protosyntax and presumably moving the communicative differentiation of hominins from other primates much farther back. For example, symbolic expression in single words beginning in modern human development at about 12 mo is a precursor to even the simplest syntax (8). Moving the evolutionary focus even farther back in time, joint attention-infant pointing with gaze alternation between an object and an adult interactor, occurring before the end of the first year-is deemed a critical precursor to words (9). Similarly, canonical babbling (onset at about 7 mo) is a crucial step toward verbal vocabulary because development and imitation of canonical syllables (e.g., "baba") is required for extensive word lear...

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Human laughter, social play, and play vocalizations of non-human primates: an evolutionary approach

Cited by 71 publications

References 0 publications

The animal nature of spontaneous human laughter

The animal nature of spontaneous human laughter

The Perception of Spontaneous and Volitional Laughter Across 21 Societies

Functional flexibility of infant vocalization and the emergence of language

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