Baboons May Provide Insight to Evolution of Reading

In the study conducted by psychologist Jonathan Grainger of the University of Aix-Marseille in France, Baboons were tested to see if they could distinguish words from non-words. The Monkey's were given a food reward for each correct answer. Rather than  memorizing what specific words looked like after many presentations, the monkeys came to realize that certain letter combinations distinguished novel real words from fake ones. recognize between 81 and 308 words, which they distinguished from more than 7,000 nonwords with about 75 percent accuracy. This study may challenge the current theory that spoken language develops much earlier than the ability to read.
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