Communication about absent entities in great apes and human infants

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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.

Original languageEnglish
JournalCognition
Volume145
Pages (from-to)63-72
Number of pages10
ISSN0010-0277
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 01.12.2015
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

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.

    Research areas

  • Comparative psychology, Displacement, Language development, Pointing
  • Psychology