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Parental selection of vocal behavior

Crying, cooing, babbling, and the evolution of language

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Abstract

Although all natural languages are spoken, there is no accepted account of the evolution of a skill prerequisite to language—control of the movements of speech. If selection applied at sexual maturity, individuals achieving some command of articulate vocal behavior in previous stages would have enjoyed unusual advantages in adulthood. I offer a parental selection hypothesis, according to which hominin parents apportioned care, in part, on the basis of their infants’ vocal behavior. Specifically, it is suggested that persistent or noxious crying reduced care to individuals who would have had difficulty learning complex behaviors, and that cooing and babbling increased social interaction and care as well as control over complex oralmotor activity of the sort required by spoken language. Several different tests of the hypothesis are suggested.

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  1. Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences, Lehman College, City University of New York, 250 Bedford Park Boulevard West, 10468, Bronx, NY

    John L. Locke

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Correspondence to John L. Locke.

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The present article is based on talks given at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association in 2001 and the International Society for Human Ethology in 2002. I am indebted to Michael Studdert-Kennedy for comments on earlier drafts of the manuscript.

John L. Locke is a professor in the Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Science at Lehman College, City University of New York. He is the author of several books, including The Child’s Path to Spoken Language (Harvard University Press, 1993). His primary interests are the development of language, the evolution of language, and interrelationships between the two.

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Locke, J.L. Parental selection of vocal behavior. Hum Nat 17, 155–168 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-006-1015-x

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