Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 14, 2025
11:00
Targeted Training of Ultrasonic Vocalizations in Aged and Parkinsonian Rats
Published on: August 8, 2011
19.8K
Sensitivity to the sonority sequencing principle in rats (Rattus norvegicus).
Chiara Santolin1, Paola Crespo-Bojorque2, Nuria Sebastian-Galles2
1Center for Brain and Cognition, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain. chiara.santolin@upf.edu.
Scientific Reports
|October 9, 2023
Summary
Rats can distinguish between well-formed and ill-formed syllables, showing sensitivity to the Sonority Sequencing Principle (SSP). This suggests innate auditory processing mechanisms, not just language-specific learning, underlie human speech perception.
Area of Science:
- Linguistics
- Bioacoustics
- Animal Behavior
Background:
- Human languages share universal structures, like syllables, governed by the Sonority Sequencing Principle (SSP).
- The SSP dictates phoneme intensity changes within syllables, creating an arch-shaped acoustic pattern.
- Early human sensitivity to the SSP suggests innate biological underpinnings.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the biological basis of the Sonority Sequencing Principle (SSP).
- To test for SSP sensitivity in a nonhuman, non-vocal-learning species.
Main Methods:
- Rats were familiarized with syllables conforming to the SSP.
- Rats were then tested on their ability to discriminate between well-structured and ill-structured syllables.
- A control group was familiarized with syllables violating the SSP.
Main Results:
- Rats successfully discriminated well-structured syllables from ill-structured ones after SSP familiarization.
- No discrimination was observed in rats familiarized with SSP-violating syllables.
- This is the first evidence of SSP sensitivity in a nonhuman species.
Conclusions:
- Sensitivity to the SSP may arise from ancient, cross-species biological predispositions for natural acoustic patterns.
- General auditory processing favoring arch-shaped sound envelopes, common in animal vocalizations, could explain human infants' early SSP sensitivity.
- Evolutionary ancient sensory mechanisms for processing natural vocalizations may facilitate human language acquisition.
