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Chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes, follow gaze direction geometrically
1Department of Psychology and Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center, Emory University
Animal Behaviour
|November 30, 1999
Summary
Chimpanzees follow human gaze direction to specific locations, not just looking for interesting things. This supports a geometric gaze-following hypothesis, similar to human infants.
Area of Science:
- Primate cognition
- Comparative psychology
- Animal behavior
Background:
- Gaze following is a key social-cognitive ability.
- Previous models suggested chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) may use a low-level strategy for gaze following.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the geometric properties of chimpanzee gaze following.
- To test whether chimpanzees follow gaze to specific locations or simply scan for interesting stimuli.
Main Methods:
- Two experiments were conducted with chimpanzee subjects observing human experimenters.
- Experiment 1: Chimpanzees observed gaze shifts over barriers.
- Experiment 2: Chimpanzees followed gaze with a distractor present.
Main Results:
- Chimpanzees looked around barriers more when the human did, indicating gaze following.
- Chimpanzees continued to follow gaze to a target location even when a distractor was presented.
- Results disconfirm a simple scanning model of gaze following.
Conclusions:
- Chimpanzees follow gaze direction geometrically to specific locations.
- Chimpanzee gaze following is more sophisticated than previously modeled, akin to human infants.
- The extent of mentalistic interpretation in chimpanzee gaze following remains an open question.