A universal preference for animate agents in hominids

Brocard, Sarah; Wilson, Vanessa A.D.; Berton, Chloé; Zuberbühler, Klaus; Bickel, Balthasar

Abstract

When conversing, humans instantaneously predict meaning from fragmentary and ambiguous mspeech, long before utterance completion. They do this by integrating priors (initial assumptions about the world) with contextual evidence to rapidly decide on the most likely meaning. One powerful prior is attentional preference for agents, which biases sentence processing but universally so only if agents are animate. Here, we investigate the evolutionary origins of this preference, by allowing chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, human children, and adults to freely choose between agents and patients in still images, following video clips depicting their dyadic interaction. All participants preferred animate (and occasionally inanimate) agents, although the effect was attenuated if patients were also animate. The findings suggest that a preference for animate agents evolved before language and is not reducible to simple perceptual biases. To conclude, both humans and great apes prefer animate agents in decision tasks, echoing a universal prior in human language processing.

Citation

Brocard, S., Wilson, V. A., Berton, C., Zuberbühler, K., & Bickel, B. (2024). A universal preference for animate agents in hominids. iScience, 27(6), Article 109996. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2024.109996

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: May 14, 2024
• Online Publication Date: May 29, 2024
• Publication Date: Jun 21, 2024
• Deposit Date: Sep 18, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 20, 2024
• Journal: iScience
• Print ISSN: 2589-0042
• Electronic ISSN: 2589-0042
• Publisher: Cell Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 27
• Issue: 6
• Article Number: 109996
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2024.109996
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/4830956