TY - JOUR

T1 - Communication about absent entities in great apes and human infants

AU - Bohn, Manuel

AU - Call, Josep

AU - Tomasello, Michael

N1 - Funding Information: Manuel Bohn was supported by a scholarship of the German National Academic Foundation . We would like to thank Elena Rossi and Sebastian Schütte for their support during data collection, Marike Schreiber for preparing Figs. 1 and 2 , Lou Haux and Luise Hornoff for reliability coding and Roger Mundry for statistical advice. We also thank the animal keepers of the Zoo Leipzig for their help with the apes and the children and their parents for participating in the study. The idea for this study was conceived after a meeting of the Animal Cognition Reading Group at the MPI-EVA and we would like to thank all participants of that session for the inspiring discussion. Publisher Copyright: © 2015 Elsevier B.V.

PY - 2015/12/1

Y1 - 2015/12/1

N2 - There is currently debate about the extent to which non-linguistic beings such as human infants and great apes are capable of absent reference. In a series of experiments we investigated the flexibility and specificity of great apes' (N = 36) and 12. month-old infants' (N = 40) requests for absent entities. Subjects had the choice between requesting visible objects directly and using the former location of a depleted option to request more of these now-absent entities. Importantly, we systematically varied the quality of the present and absent options. We found that great apes as well as human infants flexibly adjusted their requests for absent entities to these contextual variations and only requested absent entities when the visible option was of lower quality than the absent option. These results suggest that the most basic cognitive capacities for absent reference do not depend on language and are shared by humans and their closest living relatives.

AB - There is currently debate about the extent to which non-linguistic beings such as human infants and great apes are capable of absent reference. In a series of experiments we investigated the flexibility and specificity of great apes' (N = 36) and 12. month-old infants' (N = 40) requests for absent entities. Subjects had the choice between requesting visible objects directly and using the former location of a depleted option to request more of these now-absent entities. Importantly, we systematically varied the quality of the present and absent options. We found that great apes as well as human infants flexibly adjusted their requests for absent entities to these contextual variations and only requested absent entities when the visible option was of lower quality than the absent option. These results suggest that the most basic cognitive capacities for absent reference do not depend on language and are shared by humans and their closest living relatives.

KW - Comparative psychology

KW - Displacement

KW - Language development

KW - Pointing

KW - Psychology

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84940044715&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.cognition.2015.08.009

DO - 10.1016/j.cognition.2015.08.009

M3 - Journal articles

C2 - 26319970

AN - SCOPUS:84940044715

VL - 145

SP - 63

EP - 72

JO - Cognition

JF - Cognition

SN - 0010-0277

ER -