Thinking without language: an experimental approach in baboons

Animal research is a privileged way of approaching the question of the relationship between thought and language. The non-human primate, which does not have our language, displays a multitude of behaviors whose complexity suggests the existence of high-level cognition, but what is really the case?

In this talk, I will present a series of Cognitive Psychology studies aimed at understanding the perception, attention, short- and long-term memory and abstract reasoning abilities of the Guinea baboon (Papio papio). The presentation of this work will enable us to discuss the links between thought and language.

Biography

Joël Fagot is Director of Research at the CNRS. He heads the "Comparative Cognition" team at the Cognitive Psychology Laboratory in Marseille, as well as the "Primate Cognition and Behavior" experimental platform at the CNRS Primatology Station in Rousset-sur-Arc. After obtaining a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience (1988), followed by a post-doctoral fellowship at the Yerkes Primate Center in Atlanta, Joël Fagot joined the CNRS in 1989 to lead a research program on primate cognition. Today, he is an internationally renowned expert in this field, whose research has just been awarded the 2017 Fyssen Foundation International Prize.