Abstract
Vocalizations of human infants undergo dramatic changes across the first year by becoming increasingly mature and speech-like. Human vocal development is partially dependent on learning by imitation through social feedback between infants and caregivers. Recent studies revealed similar developmental processes being influenced by parental feedback in marmoset monkeys for apparently innate vocalizations. Marmosets produce infant-specific vocalizations that disappear after the first postnatal months. However, it is yet unclear whether parental feedback is an obligate requirement for proper vocal development. Using quantitative measures to compare call parameters and vocal sequence structure we show that, in contrast to normally raised marmosets, marmosets that were separated from parents after the third postnatal month still produced infant-specific vocal behaviour at subadult stages. These findings suggest a significant role of social feedback on primate vocal development until the subadult stages and further show that marmoset monkeys are a compelling model system for early human vocal development.
Highlights
Vocalizations of human infants undergo dramatic changes across the first year by becoming increasingly mature and speech-like
Using quantitative measures to compare distinct call parameters and vocal sequence structure of the litters, we show that parental feedback is necessary for normal vocal development in marmosets
We show that vocal behaviour of marmoset monkeys with limited parental feedback dramatically differs from vocal output of their normally raised siblings
Summary
Vocalizations of human infants undergo dramatic changes across the first year by becoming increasingly mature and speech-like. Marmosets produce infant-specific vocalizations that disappear after the first postnatal months It is yet unclear whether parental feedback is an obligate requirement for proper vocal development. Using quantitative measures to compare call parameters and vocal sequence structure we show that, in contrast to normally raised marmosets, marmosets that were separated from parents after the third postnatal month still produced infant-specific vocal behaviour at subadult stages. These findings suggest a significant role of social feedback on primate vocal development until the subadult stages and further show that marmoset monkeys are a compelling model system for early human vocal development. The vocalizations of the litters differed in distinct call parameters, such as call frequency, duration, entropy and inter-call intervals
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