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Cues that chimpanzees do and do not use to find hidden objects

Publication ,  Journal Article
Call, J; Agnetta, B; Tomasello, M
Published in: Animal Cognition
December 1, 2000

Chimpanzees follow conspecific and human gaze direction reliably in some situations, but very few chimpanzees reliably use gaze direction or other communicative signals to locate hidden food in the object-choice task. Three studies aimed at exploring factors that affect chimpanzee performance in this task are reported. In the first study, vocalizations and other noises facilitated the performance of some chimpanzees (only a minority). In the second study, various behavioral cues were given in which a human experimenter either touched, approached, or actually lifted and looked under the container where the food was hidden. Each of these cues led to enhanced performance for only a very few individuals. In the third study - a replication with some methodological improvements of a previous experiment - chimpanzees were confronted with two experimenters giving conflicting cues about the location of the hidden food, with one of them (the knower) having witnessed the hiding process and the other (the guesser) not. In the crucial test in which a third experimenter did the hiding, no chimpanzee found the food at above chance levels. Overall, in all three studies, by far the best performers were two individuals who had been raised in infancy by humans. It thus seems that while chimpanzees are very good at "behavior reading" of various sorts, including gaze following, they do not understand the communicative intentions (informative intentions) behind the looking and gesturing of others - with the possible exception of enculturated chimpanzees, who still do not understand the differential significance of looking and gesturing done by people who have different knowledge about states of affairs in the world. © Springer-Verlag 2000.

Duke Scholars

Published In

Animal Cognition

DOI

ISSN

1435-9448

Publication Date

December 1, 2000

Volume

3

Issue

1

Start / End Page

23 / 34

Related Subject Headings

  • Behavioral Science & Comparative Psychology
  • 52 Psychology
  • 31 Biological sciences
  • 17 Psychology and Cognitive Sciences
  • 06 Biological Sciences
 

Citation

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Call, J., Agnetta, B., & Tomasello, M. (2000). Cues that chimpanzees do and do not use to find hidden objects. Animal Cognition, 3(1), 23–34. https://doi.org/10.1007/s100710050047
Call, J., B. Agnetta, and M. Tomasello. “Cues that chimpanzees do and do not use to find hidden objects.” Animal Cognition 3, no. 1 (December 1, 2000): 23–34. https://doi.org/10.1007/s100710050047.
Call J, Agnetta B, Tomasello M. Cues that chimpanzees do and do not use to find hidden objects. Animal Cognition. 2000 Dec 1;3(1):23–34.
Call, J., et al. “Cues that chimpanzees do and do not use to find hidden objects.” Animal Cognition, vol. 3, no. 1, Dec. 2000, pp. 23–34. Scopus, doi:10.1007/s100710050047.
Call J, Agnetta B, Tomasello M. Cues that chimpanzees do and do not use to find hidden objects. Animal Cognition. 2000 Dec 1;3(1):23–34.
Journal cover image

Published In

Animal Cognition

DOI

ISSN

1435-9448

Publication Date

December 1, 2000

Volume

3

Issue

1

Start / End Page

23 / 34

Related Subject Headings

  • Behavioral Science & Comparative Psychology
  • 52 Psychology
  • 31 Biological sciences
  • 17 Psychology and Cognitive Sciences
  • 06 Biological Sciences