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MODELLING THE TRANSITION TO LEARNED COMMUNICATION: AN INITIAL INVESTIGATION INTO THE ECOLOGICAL CONDITIONS FAVOURING CULTURAL TRANSMISSION

Vocal learning is a key component of the human language faculty, and is a behaviour we share with only a few other species in nature. Perhaps the most studied example of this phenomenon is bird song which displays a number of striking parallels with human language, particularly in its development. In this paper we present a simple computational model of bird song development and then use this in a model of evolution to investigate some of the ecological conditions under which vocal behaviour can become more or less reliant on cultural transmission.