Mental construction of object symbols from meaningless elements by Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata)

When writing an object’s name, humans mentally construct its spelling. This capacity critically depends on use of the dual-structured linguistic system, in which meaningful words are represented by combinations of meaningless letters. Here we search for the evolutionary origin of this capacity in primates by designing dual-structured bigram symbol systems where different combinations of meaningless elements represent different objects. Initially, we trained Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata) in an object-bigram symbolization task and in a visually-guided bigram construction task. Subsequently, we conducted a probe test using a symbolic bigram construction task. From the initial trial of the probe test, the Japanese macaques could sequentially choose the two elements of a bigram that was not actually seen but signified by a visually presented object. Moreover, the animals’ spontaneous choice order bias, developed through the visually-guided bigram construction learning, was immediately generalized to the symbolic bigram construction test. Learning of dual-structured symbols by the macaques possibly indicates pre-linguistic adaptations for the ability of mentally constructing symbols in the common ancestors of humans and Old World monkeys.