What it means to be human.
The capacity to communicate verbally and non-verbally about things in the environment is a key element of human cognitive prowess. To understand which aspects of this skill are uniquely human, the Refcom project will compare the complexity of messages conveyed by different species – from a dolphin’s whistle to a gorilla’s gesture to a child’words – in an unprecedented attempt to trace the different evolutionary origins of referential communication across the animal world.
Comparing the sharing of knowledge across species
Many of the advances made by humankind have relied on a sophisticated ability to share knowledge. The versatility of human communication, and in particular the capacity to communicate verbally and non-verbally about things in the environment, is one of the unique features of the human species.
However, a wide variety of other animals, in groups as evolutionarily distant as bees, dolphins and dogs, also exhibit some form of this referential communication at lower levels of sophistication. Scientists are now proposing that human referential communication is not a single ability but a complex function resulting from the integration of a variety of skills and capacities with different evolutionary origins.
Refcom, part of the NEST-PATHFINDER initiative to investigate ‘What it means to be human’, is a highly ambitious multidisciplinary project, associating eight European laboratories, which aims to trace these evolutionary origins. By comparing referential communication skills in diverse animal species, in the wild and in captivity, with those of children, they hope to contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the origins of this key cognitive ability.
From gesture to word
The strongest evidence for referential communication in non-human primates comes from wild monkeys which use various types of predator-specific alarm calls. Some species are able to encode aspects such as the severity of an attack and interpret the meaning of other primate and non-primate alarm calls.
Interestingly, there is much less evidence for vocalised referential communication in our closer relatives, the apes. One possible explanation is that their limited ability to modify their voices has led them to specialise in a referential communication based on gesturing. By looking for evidence of referential signals in wild monkey calls and exploring the communicative function of vocal and gestural repertoires in bonobos and gorillas, the Refcom project aims to test the diversity of communication skills that have evolved in different primate groups, and that may underlie our own abilities.
To answer questions about what sort of social and environmental challenges may have caused referential communication to arise independently on other branches of the evolutionary tree, the consortium will also study the abilities of non-primate species – dolphins, parrots and dogs – to communicate referentially using both natural signals and those learnt through human contact. One of the project’s key challenges will be to identify what features make human referential communication unique, by comparing the performances of children with apes, dogs and parrots when faced with an identical task requiring referential skills.
The inclusion of autistic children in this exercise will help to determine which communication skills are impaired in this debilitating condition. To complete the cross-disciplinary approach, consortium members will also explore the genetic and neural basis for referential communication in the dog.
A unified conceptual framework
The Refcom project aims to provide the most comprehensive analysis to date of the components of referential communication within an evolutionary framework. Its unprecedented data collection from a diverse set of animal species, using common methodological principles and a unified conceptual framework, will provide a major opportunity for European researchers to understand how our unique cognitive abilities fit into the schema of adaptive evolutionary history.
The consortium also hopes to generate more applied outcomes through a better understanding of cognitive impairments such as autism, leading to the development of new tools for improved diagnosis and treatment. Through its cross-disciplinary approach, the consortium will forge new links and address persistent conceptual barriers that have prevented progress in the past. The important contributions of two Hungarian institutions will help to integrate them into a wider European framework for research at a crucial stage in their country’s incorporation into the EU.