Elizabeth Bates and the Search for the Roots of Human Language
... See more"The Symbolic Species" (1997) Terrence Deacon, a biological anthropologist, argues in his book "The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain" that the human brain and language co-evolved, each influencing the development of the other. He posits that the use of symbolic language placed unique demands on the brain, driving its exp
whether animals solve their ecological problems on their own by individual trial-and-error learning (and social groups form only because animals converge on rich food patches) or do so socially and live in groups in order to make this possible.
Robin Dunbar • Friends: Understanding the Power of our Most Important Relationships
As they hear us talk, babies are busily grouping the sounds they hear into the right categories, the categories their particular language uses. By one year of age, babies’ speech categories begin to resemble those of the adults in their culture.
Alison Gopnik, Andrew N. Meltzoff, • The Scientist In The Crib: Minds, Brains, And How Children Learn
Children who observed their parents using language as a tool for cognitive exploration, rather than just control, were more likely to emulate that usage.