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Is the consonant bias specifically human? Long–Evans rats encode vowels better than consonants in words

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Abstract

In natural languages, vowels tend to convey structures (syntax, prosody) while consonants are more important lexically. The consonant bias, which is the tendency to rely more on consonants than on vowels to process words, is well attested in human adults and infants after the first year of life. Is the consonant bias based on evolutionarily ancient mechanisms, potentially present in other species? The current study investigated this issue in a species phylogenetically distant from humans: Long–Evans rats. During training, the animals were presented with four natural word-forms (e.g., mano, “hand”). We then compared their responses to novel words carrying either a consonant (pano) or a vowel change (meno). Results show that the animals were less disrupted by consonantal alterations than by vocalic alterations of words. That is, word recognition was more affected by the alteration of a vowel than a consonant. Together with previous findings in very young human infants, this reliance on vocalic information we observe in rats suggests that the emergence of the consonant bias may require a combination of vocal, cognitive and auditory skills that rodents do not seem to possess.

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Funding

This study was funded by funding from an European Union’s ERC Starting Grant (Ref: 312519, BioCon) and Spanish Ministerio de Economia Grant (PSI2013-44992-P) awarded to Juan Manuel Toro, and the Horizon 2020 research and program Individual Fellowship MARIE SkŁodowska-CURIE ACTIONS’ Grant (H2020-MSCA-IF-2015, Ref: 707996, Title: Speech-sound Processing in Infant Development and Evolution) awarded to Camillia Bouchon.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Brain and Cognition, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Carrer Ramon Trias Fargas, 25-27, 08005, Barcelona, Spain

    Camillia Bouchon & Juan M. Toro

  2. ICREA, Barcelona, Spain

    Juan M. Toro

  3. Laboratoire Ethologie Cognition Développement, University Paris Nanterre, Nanterre, France

    Camillia Bouchon

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  1. Camillia Bouchon
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  2. Juan M. Toro
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Contributions

CB designed the study, CB and JMT built the stimuli, analysed and interpreted the data, CB drafted the manuscript. Both the authors reviewed the manuscript. We thank Jean Remy Hochmann for valuable comments on a previous version of the manuscript and Aina Viles for running the experiments.

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Correspondence to Camillia Bouchon.

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Camillia Bouchon declares that she has no conflict of interest. Juan Manuel Toro declares that he has no conflict of interest.

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Bouchon, C., Toro, J.M. Is the consonant bias specifically human? Long–Evans rats encode vowels better than consonants in words. Anim Cogn 22, 839–850 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-019-01280-3

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