Apes' use of iconic cues in the object-choice task
Esther Herrmann1, Alicia P Melis, Michael Tomasello
1Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany. eherrman@eva.mpg.de
Animal Cognition
|January 6, 2006
Summary
Great apes can find hidden food when given both a picture and a location cue. However, they fail when only given a picture, suggesting they don't understand cooperative communication.
Area of Science:
- Primate cognition
- Comparative psychology
- Animal behavior
Background:
- Great apes demonstrate limited ability in locating hidden food using direct physical markers.
- Previous research indicates challenges in apes' interpretation of human-provided cues for food location.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if perceptual similarity between an iconic cue and hidden food aids apes in locating rewards.
- To determine the role of iconic cues, with and without spatial information, in great ape foraging behavior.
Main Methods:
- Four experiments were conducted with chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans, and gorillas.
- Iconic cues (e.g., banana replica) were presented with or without spatial/indexical information to indicate hidden food locations.
Main Results:
- Apes performed above chance when iconic cues were paired with spatial/indexical cues.
- Performance dropped to chance levels when iconic cues were presented without spatial/indexical information.
Conclusions:
- Iconic information aids great apes in searching for hidden food.
- Apes' poor performance without spatial cues suggests a lack of understanding of the experimenter's cooperative communicative intent.
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