This week we are going to try out the debate format for these tutorials. Next to your name on the tutorial assignment sheet, there is an A or a B. That is your ‘team’. The two teams in each group will read two separate papers, present and evaluate the strengths of two different perspectives suggested by those papers, then (hopefully) make friends and identify how the two different perspectives can be integrated.
This week’s lecture and associated reading from Fitch were about the comparative approach to studying cognition and communication: understanding the evolutionary history of cognitive capacities and the selection pressures that might have driven their evolution by studying homologous and analogous traits in other species (if you don’t know what that means, this tutorial is an excellent opportunity to find out!). Fitch brings in evidence of the cognitive and communicative capacities of a wide range of species, ranging from species which are closely related to humans (other apes; other primates; other mammals, including e.g. sea lions) to more distantly related species (mainly birds, who are also vertebrates like us but last shared a common ancestor with mammals between 310 and 330 million years ago). In this tutorial we want you to discuss the merits of these various species and clades as comparator groups for understanding the evolution of language in humans.
The two teams in each group will therefore read a paper about communication and vocal learning, either in birds (team A) or in chimpanzees (team B) – note that there are many many species of birds, so we are not strictly comparing like with like here. The debate should focus around the relevance and utility of these traits and these species to the study of the evolution of language in humans: it’ll probably be most fun if you start off by arguing for the strengths of the species in your paper, and try to identify the problems with the other paper based on the other team’s presentation of it. It’s entirely up to Carmen and Cathleen (and you!) how to use the time available in the tutorial, but I’d suggest something like: a short period of discussion within the two teams, identifying the main points to be made; reconvening as a group and each team taking turns to argue for strengths of the paper they read and weaknesses of the other paper (this can be as interactive or sequenced as you like); a more general conciliatory discussion of the issues raised, the collective consensus on the issues discussed, interesting points raised, and any questions to bring to the following lecture.
The two readings are below. Both are behind paywalls but can be accessed online for free from computers on the University network – if you can’t access them from a Uni computer or from your own computer on the Uni wireless network, let me know asap.
For team A: Moorman, S., & Boluis, J. J. (2013). Behavioral similarities between birdsong and spoken language. In J. J. Bolhuis and M. Everaert (Eds.), Birdsong, Speech and Language: Exploring the Evolution of Mind and Brain (pp. 111-124). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Available online on the university network – if this direct link doesn’t work, just search for the book on the library catalogue and then view the online version. [NB. if you want a more detailed article on the same issues, try this other article by Bolhuis.]
For team B: Watson, S. K., Townsend, S. W., Schel, A. M., Wilke, C., Wallace, E. K., Cheng, L., West, V, and Slocombe, K. E. (2015). Vocal Learning in the Functionally Referential Food Grunts of Chimpanzees. Current Biology, 25, 495-499. Available online on the university network. [NB. the analysis on page 2 of this paper is pretty complicated, and we don't expect you to understand all the methods and stats - focus on the summary of the results the authors provide, and what it means.]