A baboon (Papio papio)COURTESY OF J. FAGOT
Although they have no known language, baboons can accurately discriminate four-letter English words from non-words, according to a study published today (April 12) in Science.
Scientists have typically considered this—the visual analysis of letters and their positions in a word—the first step in the reading process and fundamentally dependent on language. For example, little children learn to read by sounding out words they already know. But the new finding suggests that ability to recognize words is not based on language skills but on an ancient ability, shared with other primates, to process visual objects.
“Ultimately, reading depends on language," wrote Michael Platt, director of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, in an accompanying essay in Science. "But at ...
