"Does a shared computational basis underlie human artistic and linguistic accomplishments? Why do humans create and enjoy orderly patterns in music and visual arts? Are the mechanisms involved uniquely human or shared with other species? This project explores the cognitive underpinnings of language, music & visual art in humans, directly comparing them with the pattern perception abilities of other animals. The proposal is grounded in a rigorous, mathematically-based theoretical framework (""formal language theory""), developed by computer scientists and theoretical linguists, which is extended here to include rule-governed patterns in the musical and visual domains. The types of patterns recognizable by different species will be tested using innovative empirical testing methods (based on ""artificial grammar learning"") applicable to both humans and animals. An important additional innovation of this research is the proposed use of repetitive visual patterns (akin to quilts, tilings and other ""decorative"" arts) and isomorphic musical and speech stimuli, all generated using the same ""grammars"" (abstract rule systems). The addition of the visual dimension allows experimental manipulation of the short-term memory resources involved in pattern perception in a way impossible with acoustic stimuli. The animal species tested include nonhuman primates and birds, and have been chosen to allow evaluation of the effects of relative brain size on pattern perception and cognition in general. The doubly comparative approach adopted here will allow us to evaluate the degree to which general-purpose cognitive abilities, cutting across domains, differentiate human minds from those of other animals, or are shared. Either way, the results of this research will have wide-reaching implications for both the behavioural sciences and humanities."