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Body perception in chimpanzees and humans: The expert effect.
Jie Gao1,2, Fumito Kawakami3, Masaki Tomonaga4
1Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University, Inuyama, Aichi, Japan. gao.jie.87c@kyoto-u.jp.
Scientific Reports
|April 30, 2020
Summary
Humans and chimpanzees process upright bodies better than inverted ones. Humans show an "expert effect" with chimpanzee bodies, while chimpanzees partially show it with human bodies, highlighting experience
Area of Science:
- Comparative psychology
- Evolutionary biology
- Neuroscience
Background:
- The inversion effect, where upright stimuli are recognized better than inverted ones, is observed in humans and chimpanzees for faces and bodies.
- Humans exhibit an "expert effect," showing the inversion effect for objects of expertise.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if chimpanzees display the expert effect.
- To compare human and chimpanzee body recognition abilities and the influence of expertise.
- To explore the flexibility of specialized object processing in humans versus chimpanzees.
Main Methods:
- Chimpanzees were tested on human body recognition (human experts).
- Humans were tested on chimpanzee and human body recognition (chimpanzee experts and non-experts).
- Body recognition tasks were used to assess the inversion and expert effects.
Main Results:
- Humans with chimpanzee expertise showed a significant expert effect with chimpanzee bodies.
- Chimpanzees demonstrated a partial expert effect with human bodies.
- Non-expert humans showed similar performance to expert humans on chimpanzee bodies, but with subtle differences indicating expertise.
Conclusions:
- Human object processing, particularly for bodies, is more flexibly tuned by experience than in chimpanzees.
- Experience plays a crucial role in specialized object processing in both humans and chimpanzees.
- This study sheds light on the evolution of object recognition and expertise across species.
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