The development of the earliest vocalizations of human infants is influenced by social feedback from caregivers. As these vocalizations change, they increasingly elicit such feedback. This pattern of development is in stark contrast to that of our close phylogenetic relatives, Old World monkeys and apes, who produce mature-sounding vocalizations at birth. We put forth a scenario to account for this difference: Humans have a cooperative breeding strategy, which pressures infants to compete for the attention from caregivers. Humans use this strategy because large brained human infants are energetically costly and born altricial. An altricial brain accommodates vocal learning. To test this hypothetical scenario, we present findings from New World marmoset monkeys indicating that, through convergent evolution, this species adopted a largely identical developmental system—one that includes vocal learning and cooperative breeding.

中文翻译：

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合作护理和前语言声乐学习的演变

人类婴儿最早发声的发展受到护理人员社会反馈的影响。随着这些声音的变化，它们越来越多地引起这样的反馈。这种发育模式与我们的近亲、旧大陆猴子和猿类形成鲜明对比，它们在出生时就发出成熟的声音。我们提出了一个场景来解释这种差异：人类有一种合作繁殖策略，这迫使婴儿竞争照顾者的注意力。人类之所以使用这种策略，是因为大脑较大的人类婴儿精力消耗很大，而且出生时是晚熟的。晚熟的大脑适应发声学习。为了测试这一假设情景，我们提出了来自新大陆狨猴的研究结果，表明通过趋同进化，该物种采用了基本相同的发育系统，其中包括声音学习和合作繁殖。