Humans and great apes visually track event roles in similar ways

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Science
• Comparative Psychology
• Linguistics

Background:

• Human language utilizes complex cognitive mechanisms, some shared with animals.
• The ability to decompose events into agent-patient roles is crucial for human language processing and syntax.
• No clear animal equivalent for agent-patient role decomposition in event cognition has been identified.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare visual event tracking between humans and great apes.
• To investigate the cognitive underpinnings of agent-patient role understanding in different species.
• To explore the developmental trajectory of event role tracking in human infants.

Main Methods:

• Comparative eye-tracking study of humans and great apes observing visual event stimuli.
• Stimuli designed to elicit causal processing in human participants.
• Analysis of gaze patterns, controlling for attention to background information.
• Comparison with gaze patterns of six-month-old human infants.

Main Results:

• Humans and great apes exhibited similar gaze patterns when tracking agent-patient relations.
• Attention was primarily alternated between agents and patients, suggesting learning about the event.
• Agents were occasionally prioritized under specific conditions across species.
• Six-month-old infants did not follow agent-patient relations, focusing instead on background information.

Conclusions:

• Event role tracking, a potential cognitive precursor to syntax, may have evolved much earlier than language.
• Ontogenetic development and experience are crucial for the emergence of agent-patient role tracking in humans.
• Comparative studies reveal shared cognitive foundations for event cognition across species, with unique developmental pathways in humans.