Soru

Passage:
In evolutionary linguistics, a central debate concerns the origin of syntactic recursion—the capacity to embed structures within structures of the same type (e.g., relative clauses within sentences). Proponents of the adaptationist view argue that recursion evolved as a domain-specific genetic adaptation explicitly selected to enhance complex social communication. Opposing this view, cognitive anthropologist Dr. Elena Vance contends that syntactic recursion is an exaptation: a cognitive byproduct of domain-general planning mechanisms originally selected for late Acheulean stone-tool manufacturing. Vance argues that because toolmaking requires hierarchical, sequential action planning—where sub-goals are nested within primary goals—the neural architecture for recursive processing was already established prior to the emergence of complex language. To support her hypothesis, Vance highlights neuroimaging studies showing that modern individuals executing complex lithic knapping activate frontoparietal neural networks nearly identical to those engaged during recursive sentence processing.

Which of the following, if true, would most weaken Dr. Vance's argument that syntactic recursion emerged as an exaptation from cognitive mechanisms selected for toolmaking?