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Articles Rats Distinguish Languages The Washington Post - January 10, 2005 Rats Distinguish Languages The ability to recognize patterns in the sound of speech is considered
fundamental to the development of spoken language. Only two species of
mammals, humans and tamarin monkeys, were known to possess this ability --
until now. New research has identified a surprising third -- rats. Juan M. Toro of the Parc Cientific of Barcelona in Spain and colleagues
studied 16 rats, training them to press a lever when they heard a
synthesized five-second sentence in Dutch or Japanese. The rats could differentiate between sentences in Dutch or Japanese,
pressing the lever only when they were played a sentence in the language in
which they had been trained. The rats trained in Japanese, for example, did
not press the lever when they were played the same sentence in Dutch. In addition, the animals appeared able to transfer their familiarity with
the patterns of the language they had been trained in to new sentences --
pressing the lever when they were played sentences in that language even if
they had never heard them before. "It was striking to find that rats can track certain information that
seems to be so important in language development in humans," Toro said. The rats were, however, not as adept as humans, who are able to discern
the same sentence when spoken by different individuals, something rats were
less able to do. The research shows "which abilities that humans use for language are
shared with other animals and which are uniquely human." -- Rob Stein Fair Use Notice: This document may contain
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permission from the copyright owner. |
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