With Chloé Berton, @vd0ubleu.bsky.social, @balthasarbickel.bsky.social and @zuberbuehler.bsky.social (@nccrlanguage.bsky.social)

With: Pavel Voinov, @balthasarbickel.bsky.social, @zuberbuehler.bsky.social, Zoo Basel, @nccrlanguage.bsky.social, @cogcompneuch.bsky.social

3/ This finding suggests that the ability to parse events in terms of agents and patients isn’t unique to humans – it’s a shared feature of hominid cognition with deep evolutionary roots and a potential pre-requist for human language 🗣️

2/ The results? Both humans and a highly motivated chimpanzee showed longer response times when event roles switched, indicating that they both spontaneously encode these roles, even when it’s not required by the task.

1/ When we observe social interactions, we quickly understand 'who does what to whom' – a core feature of human cognition. This ability to assign event roles (agent vs. patient) is crucial for understanding complex social dynamics. But how ancient is this skill?