Visual Recognition of Age Class and Preference for Infantile Features: Implications for Species-Specific vs Universal Cognitive Traits in Primates

Despite not knowing the exact age of individuals, humans can estimate their rough age using age-related physical features. Nonhuman primates show some age-related physical features; however, the cognitive traits underlying their recognition of age class have not been revealed. Here, we tested the ability of two species of Old World monkey, Japanese macaques (JM) and Campbell's monkeys (CM), to spontaneously discriminate age classes using visual paired comparison (VPC) tasks based on the two distinct categories of infant and adult images. First, VPCs were conducted in JM subjects using conspecific JM stimuli. When analyzing the side of the first look, JM subjects significantly looked more often at novel images. Based on analyses of total looking durations, JM subjects looked at a novel infant image longer than they looked at a familiar adult image, suggesting the ability to spontaneously discriminate between the two age classes and a preference for infant over adult images. Next, VPCs were tested in CM subjects using heterospecific JM stimuli. CM subjects showed no difference in the side of their first look, but looked at infant JM images longer than they looked at adult images; the fact that CMs were totally naïve to JMs suggested that the attractiveness of infant images transcends species differences. This is the first report of visual age class recognition and a preference for infant over adult images in nonhuman primates. Our results suggest not only species-specific processing for age class recognition but also the evolutionary origins of the instinctive human perception of baby cuteness schema, proposed by the ethologist Konrad Lorenz

Teaching: Natural or Cultural?

In this chapter I argue that teaching, as we now understand the term, is historically and cross-culturally very rare. It appears to be unnecessary to transmit culture or to socialize children. Children are, on the other hand, primed by evolution to be avid observers, imitators, players and helpers—roles that reveal the profoundly autonomous and self-directed nature of culture acquisition (Lancy in press a). And yet, teaching is ubiquitous throughout the modern world—at least among the middle to upper class segment of the population. This ubiquity has led numerous scholars to argue for the universality and uniqueness of teaching as a characteristically human behavior. The theme of this chapter is that this proposition is unsustainable. Teaching is largely a result of recent cultural changes and the emergence of modern economies, not evolution

The Cuban lexicon Lucumí and African language Yorùbá: musical and historical connections

Lucumí’s vocabulary is strongly related to Yorùbá in southwest Nigeria due to a historical connection stemming from the transatlantic slave trade. It is variously described as an Afro-Cuban language still spoken by contemporary religious devotees, aCuban dialectof Yorùbá, derived from amixtureof Yorùbá dialectsin southwestNigeria,an archaic formofYorùbáthat haspreservedtheNigerianpast in Cuba, and/or corrupted or incomplete Yorùbá. The word “lexicon,” however, rarely appears in Lucumí portrayals. Since inadequate linguistic research was undertaken in Cuba while African vernaculars were still spoken outside of ritual and musical contexts in the first decades of the twentieth century, Lucumí explanations are frequently highly presumptuous or speculative. Much contemporary research lacks scholarly rigor and has relied uncritically on anecdotal evidence collected from selected field respondents, whose narratives are frequently compromised by religious identity politics within a hierarchical and secretive spiritual tradition. A growing body of literature about Lucumí has been little challenged and continues to be uncritically recycled into new scholarship and the religious community itself. Along with critiquing existing literature about uttered Lucumí, this chapter draws on my ethnomusicological field work in Nigeria and Cuba since 1998 to arguethat Lucumí has been alexicon – a memorized corpus of words and phrases largely devoid of syntax – dependent on musical and ritual performance and written sources for almost a hundred years. While much Lucumí analysis has relied solely on transcribed text without any regard for the sonic dimensions of pitch, rhythm, and amplitude of uttered, sung, and drummed texts, I assert that musical structure can be more enduring than linguistic content. By drawing on empirical historical evidence and illustrating my argument with analyses of my field data, published song texts, and commercial recordings, I demonstrate how musical analysis can be harnessed as a powerful method of determining the vestigial relationship between the Lucumí lexicon in Cuba and the Yorùbá language in Africa