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The Resident-intruder Paradigm: A Standardized Test for Aggression, Violence and Social Stress

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Published on: July 4, 2013

From Physical Aggression to Verbal Behavior: Language Evolution and Self-Domestication Feedback Loop.

Ljiljana Progovac¹, Antonio Benítez-Burraco²

¹Linguistics Program, Department of English, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, United States.

Frontiers in Psychology

|January 11, 2020

Summary

Human self-domestication favored replacing physical aggression with verbal aggression, creating a feedback loop that advanced language evolution. This explains reduced reactive aggression but increased proactive aggression with modern language.

Keywords:

child development language disorders language evolution neurolinguistics reactive/proactive aggression self-domestication sexual selection verbal aggression

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Area of Science:

Evolutionary biology
Linguistics
Neuroscience

Background:

Human self-domestication is linked to reduced aggression.
The evolution of language is a key human trait.
The interplay between aggression and language evolution remains debated.

Purpose of the Study:

To propose a feedback loop between human self-domestication and early language evolution.
To explore how the shift from physical to verbal aggression influenced human evolution.
To investigate the role of early linguistic behaviors, like insult and humor, in this process.

Main Methods:

Theoretical modeling of evolutionary processes.
Analysis of linguistic and behavioral data.
Review of neurobiological, ontogenetic, and clinical evidence.

Main Results:

A mutually reinforcing feedback loop between self-domestication and language evolution is proposed.
Verbal aggression and sophisticated language emerged as reactive aggression decreased.
Proactive aggression may have increased with the advent of modern language.

Conclusions:

The transition to verbal aggression was crucial for human self-domestication and language development.
This process likely occurred between 200,000 and 50,000 years ago.
Understanding this feedback loop offers insights into human uniqueness and cognitive disorders.