W. Tecumseh S. Fitch

Biosketch

W. Tecumseh Fitch is Professor of Cognitive Biology in the Faculty of Life Sciences at the University of Vienna, Austria. Born in Boston, Fitch earned his BA in Biology and his PhD in Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences, both from Brown University. After obtaining a patent and starting a company in bio-tech, Fitch was a postdoctoral fellow at MIT and Harvard (Speech and Hearing Sciences). His first teaching position was at Harvard (both in Biology and Psychology Departments). He was a fellow at the European Institute for Advanced Study before moving to the University of St Andrews (Psychology), and finally moving to the University of Vienna, where he co-founded the Dept of Cognitive Biology in 2009. He is a fellow in the Association for Psychological Science and the National Academy of Sciences (USA). Honors include the Clifford Morgan “Best Article” award in 2017 (Psychonomic Society), and ERC Advanced Grant, and honorary professorships at the University of St Andrews and University of Leipzig (Leibniz Professorship). His lives with his wife Gesche Westphal-Fitch just outside of Vienna and enjoys biking, playing and composing music and watercolor painting.

Research Interests

Prof. Fitch's research interests are in the evolution of cognition and communication, with a particular focus on the evolution of language and music, studied from a broad comparative perspective. In the domain of human speech, he and his colleagues demonstrated that the much-discussed descent of the human larynx is neither uniquely human (being shared with a variety of other mammals) nor particularly crucial for speech production: the vocal tract of other primates is "speech-ready." His research on syntax in human language and animal communication showed that while other species have a simple linear syntax, complex tree-like syntax is a particular strength of humans, leading to his "dendrophilia" hypothesis that humans have a domain-general proclivity to prefer hierarchically structured stimuli whenever possible, that applies across language, music, art and other domains. In music, his research has shown that important components of human musicality are shared with other species, including rhythmic and melodic principles and dance-like behavior. Finally, his research in animal bioacoustics has shown that the principles underlying human speech and song are shared with a wide variety of other vertebrates, from other primates to elephants, whales and birds. Besides these species, he has worked with and published on fish, frogs, alligators, seals, deer, and koalas, and his research demonstrates the relevance of results from a wide variety of species to questions of deep significance for human evolution.