Many people know about the adorable habit of young children, wherein they mimic their parents’ speech with super cute, super incomprehensible gibberish. While it’s absolutely precious, it’s also an important part of their language learning process. However, humans apparently aren’t the only ones who rely on mimicking, and then feedback from, their parents. According to a study done by Yasemin B. Gultekin and Steffen R. Hage in 2017, if you prevent young monkeys from being able to see their parents, their vocalizations will be weak and underdeveloped. They discovered this by separating a group of young marmosets from their parents, and putting half of them in enclosures where they could not see their parents, and half of them in enclosures where they could see their parents, and recorded their vocalizations. They kept the monkeys in these enclosures from the ages of 3 to 13 months, and upon audio analysis, found that the visually separated young exhibited weaker and less frequent calls than their counterparts. The results show that young monkeys rely heavily on visual feedback from their parents during the development of their vocalization. It also suggests that there must be some sort of signal that the parent is conveying to the young to aid in this development. So next time you hear your baby babbling, be sure to pay lots of attention to them and give them a big smile, because apparently, they need it!
Gultekin, Y. B., & Hage, S. R. (2017). Limiting parental feedback disrupts vocal development in marmoset monkeys. Nature Communications, 8, 1-9. dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms14046
Kate Ellis
November 12, 2018 — 2:44 pm
I never thought vocalization can play an important role in developing for young. This is an important article and explains how all animals are very similar to each other that we all need the basic caring.
Kayla Bolden
November 12, 2018 — 3:59 pm
This article was interesting to read and knowing that non-human animals as need care and the feeling of neglect can also affect other animals development. We as humans soon develop the mannerisms of our caregivers and peers for the most part so, I always assumed that animals do the same thing. However, I did not expect the separation from baby monkeys and their parents to be as influential as it is.