Dogs as a model to study the emergence of concept manipulation skills for language-readiness.

Abstract

Language-readiness entails the ability to segment holistic events into discrete concepts, learn signals for such concepts, and combine them in a rule-based manner to create composite meanings. There is much debate about whether, and to what extent, the brain mechanisms that enable concept manipulation abilities in humans are unmatched in the animal kingdom. Challenging human-uniqueness theories, we propose a social cognition-mediation account hypothesizing that concept manipulation abilities essential for language-readiness could also emerge in other species with a sufficient level of certain prerequisite social-cognitive skills, namely goal-representation, intentionality-attribution, and mentalization. We argue for the involvement of a new species in comparative studies on language evolution to evaluate this hypothesis: the domestic dog, a species that has undergone selective pressures for prosociality during domestication similar to those experienced by early humans, as well as shows a natural propensity to communicate their experiences. As a consequence, dogs may possess the necessary social-cognitive capacities to develop concept manipulation skills. Dogs' concept manipulation abilities have never been systematically investigated, nor directly compared to those of humans. Capitalizing on recent advances in comparative non-invasive neuroimaging and behavioural measures, here we propose feasible, promising experimental approaches for such investigations.