If you are too slow in catching a bird, you may get another chance; but if you are too slow in avoiding a deadly snake, it would be fatal. Avoiding dangers is more urgent than winning rewards in the strategy of survival. This makes easy sense, but how it got infused into languages is astounding. Look at phonemes, which are distinct units of sound in a language that distinguish one word from another, both in meaning and pronunciation — like the “s” in “soar” makes it different from “roar”. Zachary Estes scanned phonemes in five different languages. In all of them, phonemes occur more often in positive or negative words, but phonemes that can be spoken faster are more common in negative words. That is, a phoneme-emotion association is stronger at the beginning of words than at the middle or end of negative words. This allows emotion to be understood at a stroke — even before the whole word is spoken. James Adelman said, “Language abilities evolved from more general cognitive skills or more specific communicative adaptations. These findings reveal one specific adaptation.”
SNEAK PEEK
1. Imitating babies
Imitating young infants seems to be an effective way to catch their attention and bond with them. Babies recognise what’s up when adults imitate them. Who observed that babies perceive imitators as more friendly and approach them more to engage in imitating games?
1. Gabriela-Alina Sauciuc (Lund University)
2. Spotting one star
A pixel is just one dot, a physical point, on your electronic screen. The photoreceptors of Zebrafish are somewhat like pixels — but special pixels. The fish can use a single-pixel vision to spot their tiny prey. Who described it as “the equivalent of us spotting a star in the sky”?
2. Neuroscientist Tom Baden (University of Sussex)
3. Great inheritance
Progesterone is associated with increased fertility, fewer bleedings during early pregnancy and fewer miscarriages. A variant of the progesterone receptor is present in one in three women in Europe and this variant was inherited from Neanderthals! Who made the discovery?
3. Hugo Zeberg (Max Planck Institute)
4. Dogs do care
Many dogs, untrained, will try to rescue people who appear to be in distress. If they don’t try or fail in it, it’s not that they just don’t care about their people; it means the situation is beyond their grasp. We can see how upset they’re if they fail. Who evinced it in control tests?
4. Clive D. L. Wynne (Canine Science Collaboratory at ASU)
5. More than climbing
It was thought that our early ancestors used their hands only to move around in the trees, but modern human hands evolved primarily for precision grips. Who found that the hand of a certain ancient human relative was used for both human-like functions as well as climbing?
5. Dr Christopher James Dunmore (University of Kent)
6. Cannabis in rituals
Residues of cannabis were detected on a limestone monolith (altar?) in the Judahite shrine at Tel Arad, Israel. It’s the first time that cannabis has been identified in the Ancient Near East. Who said its use in the shrine must have played a central role in the cultic rituals?
6. Eran Arie (The Israel Museum, Jerusalem)
7. Pets come first
A new study shows that children get more satisfaction from relationships with their pets than with their brothers or sisters. “The fact that pets cannot understand or talk back may even be a benefit as it means they are completely non-judgmental.” Who conducted the study?
7. Matt Cassells, a Gates Cambridge Scholar
8. At a slow pace
Humans reach maturity very slowly. Chimpanzee infants more or less take the same pace — in terms of both the time frame and the order of emergence of the different skills similar to what we see in humans. Who studied it and said it reflects “a shared evolutionary history”?
8. Aisha C. Bründl (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology)
9. Of loneliness
Loneliness is not a plight unique to older people. Younger people are good at using technology to access social relationships. If the act is not an extension but only a replacement of those relationships (which does happen often), it won’t rule out loneliness. Who made it clear?
9. Social psychologist Manuela Barreto (University of Exeter)
[ANSWERS]
1. Gabriela-Alina Sauciuc (Lund University)
2. Neuroscientist Tom Baden (University of Sussex)
3. Hugo Zeberg (Max Planck Institute)
4. Clive D. L. Wynne (Canine Science Collaboratory at ASU)
5. Dr Christopher James Dunmore (University of Kent)
6. Eran Arie (The Israel Museum, Jerusalem)
7. Matt Cassells, a Gates Cambridge Scholar
8. Aisha C. Bründl (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology)
9. Social psychologist Manuela Barreto (University of Exeter)
QUIZ No. 957
1. Who claimed that drummers with high synchrony can do well in another team task?
– Dr Ilanit Gordon
– Richard Eugene Nisbett
– Susan Tufts Fiske
1. Dr Ilanit Gordon
2. Who noticed that religious services make people less prone to deaths of despair?
– Eleanor Maccoby
– Jennifer Lynn Eberhardt
– Tyler J. VanderWeele
2. Tyler J. VanderWeele
3. Who identified the gene that keeps people slim regardless of what they eat or do?
– Dr Josef Penninger
– William French Anderson
– Thomas J. Hudson
3. Dr Josef Penninger
4. Which famous ophthalmologist was also a jazz musician and Broadway producer?
– Charles D. Kelman
– Vladimir Petrovich Filatov
– Marshall Miller Parks
4. Charles D. Kelman
5. This King of Pantomime never took to drink but “he took to ice-cream”. Name him.
– Julian Wylie
– Nicholas Jeffrey Thomas
– Francis Laidler
5. Julian Wylie