Arbib/From monkey-like action recognition to human language: BBS Call for Commentators

[Behavioral & Brain Sciences]

Below please find the abstract, keywords, and a link to the full text
of the forthcoming BBS target article:

     From monkey-like action recognition to human language: 
        An evolutionary framework for neurolinguistics

                    Michael A. Arbib

This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain
Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing
Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research
in the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences.

Commentators must be BBS Associates or suggested by a BBS Associate.
To be considered as a commentator for this article, to suggest other
appropriate commentators, or for information about how to become a BBS
Associate, please reply by EMAIL within three (3) weeks to:

                     calls at bbsonline.org

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expectation (indeed, it would be calamitous) that each recipient
should comment on every occasion! Hence there is no need to reply
except if you wish to comment, or to suggest someone to comment.

If you are not a BBS Associate, please approach a current BBS
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with your work to nominate you. All past BBS authors, referees and
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http://www.bbsonline.org/Instructions/assoclist.html

If no current BBS Associate knows your work, please send us your
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to ask whether they would be prepared to nominate you. (In the
meantime, your name, address and email address will be entered into
our database as an unaffiliated investigator.)

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                   COMMENTARY PROPOSAL INSTRUCTIONS
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To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, it would be
most helpful if you would send us an indication of the relevant
expertise you would bring to bear on the paper, and what aspect of the
paper you would anticipate commenting upon.

Please DO NOT prepare a commentary until you receive a formal
invitation, indicating that it was possible to include your name on
the final list, which is constructed so as to balance areas of
expertise and frequency of prior commentaries in BBS.


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                  *** TARGET ARTICLE INFORMATION ***
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TITLE: From monkey-like action recognition to human language: An
evolutionary framework for neurolinguistics

AUTHORS: Michael A. Arbib

ABSTRACT: The article analyzes the neural and functional grounding of
language skills as well as their emergence in hominid evolution,
hypothesizing stages leading from abilities known to exist in monkeys
and apes and presumed to exist in our hominid ancestors right through
to modern spoken and signed languages. The starting point is the
observation that both premotor area F5 in monkeys and Broca's area in
humans contain a "mirror system" active for both execution and
observation of manual actions, and that F5 and Brocas area are
homologous brain regions. This grounded the Mirror System Hypothesis
of Rizzolatti & Arbib (1998) which offers the mirror system for
grasping as a key neural "missing link" between the abilities of our
non-human ancestors of 20 million years ago and modern human language,
with manual gestures rather than a system for vocal communication
providing the initial seed for this evolutionary process. The present
article, however, goes "beyond the mirror" to offer hypotheses on
evolutionary changes within and outside the mirror systems which may
have occurred to equip Homo sapiens with a language-ready brain.
Crucial to the early stages of this progression is the mirror system
for grasping and its extension to permit imitation. Imitation is seen
as evolving via a so-called "simple" system such as that found in
chimpanzees (which allows imitation of complex "objectoriented"
sequences but only as the result of extensive practice) to a so-called
"complex" system found in humans (which allows rapid imitation even of
complex sequences, under appropriate conditions) which supports
pantomime. This is hypothesized to provide the substrate for the
development of protosign, a combinatorially open repertoire of manual
gestures, which then provides the scaffolding for the emergence of
protospeech (which thus owes little to non-human vocalizations), with
protosign and protospeech then developing in an expanding spiral. It
is argued that these stages involve biological evolution of both brain
and body. By contrast, it is argued that the progression from
protosign and protospeech to languages with full-blown syntax and
compositional semantics was a historical phenomenon in the development
of Homo sapiens, involving few if any further biological changes.

KEYWORDS: gestures; hominids; language evolution; mirror system;
neurolinguistics; primates; protolanguage; sign language; speech;
vocalization

http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Arbib-05012002/Referees/


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                    SUPPLEMENTARY ANNOUNCEMENT
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(1) Call for Book Nominations for BBS Multiple Book Review

    In the past, Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS) had only been able
    to do 1-2 BBS multiple book treatments per year, because of our
    limited annual page quota. BBS's new expanded page quota will make
    it possible for us to increase the number of books we treat per
    year, so this is an excellent time for BBS Associates and
    biobehavioral/cognitive scientists in general to nominate books you
    would like to see accorded BBS multiple book review.

    (Authors may self-nominate, but books can only be selected on the
    basis of multiple nominations.) It would be very helpful if you
    indicated in what way a BBS Multiple Book Review of the book(s) you
    nominate would be useful to the field (and of course a rich list of
    potential reviewers would be the best evidence of its potential
    impact!).



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Barbara Finlay - Editor
Paul Bloom - Editor

Behavioral and Brain Sciences
bbs at bbsonline.org
http://www.bbsonline.org
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