EVOLUTIONARY MECHANISMS IN THE BENGALESE FINCH’S SONG: PARALLELS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR THE STUDY OF HUMAN SPEECH

摘要: A robust body of evidence accrued over> 100 years of research in birdsong demonstrates striking analogies between this exquisite behavior practiced by a much evolutionarily distant animal group and speech in our species. Both birdsong and speech depend upon vocal production learning, that is the ability to learn how to produce vocal sounds via imitation-in addition to vocal usage learning, the ability to associate innate sounds with specific elements and events. Like a child learning to speak, a young bird must first hear the vocal sounds of adults and then imitate those sounds on its own. Initially, the bird will sing a faint, unstructured song, akin to babbling in human infants. By adulthood, this immature chirping progresses to a more consistent birdsong, just as babbling progresses to speaking. These parallel developmental trajectories are accompanied by striking similarities in the way brains and their underlying …