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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Nov 5, 2025

Recording Mouse Ultrasonic Vocalizations to Evaluate Social Communication
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Novel vocalizations are understood across cultures.

Aleksandra Ćwiek1,2, Susanne Fuchs3, Christoph Draxler4

  • 1Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, 10117, Berlin, Germany. cwiek@leibniz-zas.de.

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This study shows that novel vocalizations can convey meaning across diverse languages, challenging the idea that spoken sounds lack iconic potential. People can understand these non-word sounds without prior agreement, suggesting a basis for early communication.

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Area of Science:

  • Evolutionary Linguistics
  • Cross-Cultural Psychology
  • Bioacoustics

Background:

  • Mutual agreement on word meanings is crucial for linguistic communication.
  • Iconic gestures, where form cues meaning, are a proposed solution for establishing initial communication.
  • The potential for vocalizations to serve a similar iconic role is debated.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether novel vocalizations can be understood across diverse linguistic backgrounds.
  • To test the cross-cultural comprehension of non-word vocalizations for various meanings.
  • To challenge the notion that vocalizations have limited iconic representational capacity.

Main Methods:

  • Conducted two cross-cultural comprehension experiments.
  • Tested listeners from 28 languages across 12 language families.
  • Assessed comprehension of novel vocalizations produced by English speakers for a range of meanings.

Main Results:

  • Listeners from all tested languages demonstrated above-chance accuracy in guessing the referent of novel vocalizations.
  • Successful comprehension was observed across diverse linguistic and cultural groups.
  • Vocalizations proved effective in conveying meaning for a variety of concepts.

Conclusions:

  • Vocalizations possess a greater potential for iconic representation than previously assumed.
  • Non-word vocalizations can facilitate communication of diverse meanings in the absence of established words.
  • Findings support the role of vocalizations in the origins and development of human language.