Context-sensitive adjustment of pointing in great apes
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In: Scientific Reports, Vol. 10, No. 1, 1048, 01.12.2020.
Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Context-sensitive adjustment of pointing in great apes
AU - Tauzin, Tibor
AU - Bohn, Manuel
AU - Gergely, György
AU - Call, Josep
N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2020, The Author(s).
PY - 2020/12/1
Y1 - 2020/12/1
N2 - Great apes are able to request objects from humans by pointing. It is unclear, however, whether this is an associated response to a certain set of cues (e.g. the presence and attention of a human addressee) or a communicative signal which can be adjusted to relevant aspects of the spatial and social context. In three experiments, we tested captive great apes’ flexible use of pointing gestures. We manipulated the communicative context so that the default pointing response of apes would have indicated an undesired object, either due to 1) the spatial arrangements of the target objects, 2) the perspective of the addressee or 3) the knowledge of the addressee about the target objects’ location. The results of the three experiments indicate that great apes can successfully adjust their pointing to the spatial configuration of the referent environment such as distance and location of food. However, we found no evidence that they take the perspective or the knowledge of the addressee into account when doing so. This implies that pointing in great apes is a context-sensitive, but maybe less versatile, communicative signal compared to human pointing.
AB - Great apes are able to request objects from humans by pointing. It is unclear, however, whether this is an associated response to a certain set of cues (e.g. the presence and attention of a human addressee) or a communicative signal which can be adjusted to relevant aspects of the spatial and social context. In three experiments, we tested captive great apes’ flexible use of pointing gestures. We manipulated the communicative context so that the default pointing response of apes would have indicated an undesired object, either due to 1) the spatial arrangements of the target objects, 2) the perspective of the addressee or 3) the knowledge of the addressee about the target objects’ location. The results of the three experiments indicate that great apes can successfully adjust their pointing to the spatial configuration of the referent environment such as distance and location of food. However, we found no evidence that they take the perspective or the knowledge of the addressee into account when doing so. This implies that pointing in great apes is a context-sensitive, but maybe less versatile, communicative signal compared to human pointing.
KW - Psychology
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85078164169&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/s41598-019-56183-7
DO - 10.1038/s41598-019-56183-7
M3 - Journal articles
C2 - 31974479
AN - SCOPUS:85078164169
VL - 10
JO - Scientific Reports
JF - Scientific Reports
SN - 2045-2322
IS - 1
M1 - 1048
ER -