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Manual action in infant chimpanzees: a preliminary study

¹Department of Communication, Oita Prefectural College of Arts and Culture, Japan.

Perceptual and Motor Skills

|October 1, 1996

Summary

Infant chimpanzees rarely exhibit index finger pointing, unlike human infants who develop this communicative gesture early. This study observed limited pointing behaviors in young chimpanzees attempting to gain researcher attention.

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Area of Science:

Primate behavior
Developmental psychology
Comparative cognition

Background:

Human infants develop index finger pointing early, crucial for deictic and communicative functions.
Chimpanzees are reported to rarely use index finger pointing, contrasting with human developmental trajectories.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the occurrence and morphology of manual actions, specifically index finger pointing, in infant chimpanzees.
To compare the early pointing behaviors of chimpanzees with those observed in human infants.

Main Methods:

Observation of manual actions in two infant chimpanzees.
Focus on behaviors during attempts to establish eye contact with an experimenter.

Main Results:

Infant chimpanzees displayed index finger pointing very infrequently.
The observed pointing actions were morphologically limited, even when attempting to engage an experimenter.

Conclusions:

Early pointing behaviors in chimpanzees appear significantly less developed compared to human infants.
The rarity of index finger pointing in infant chimpanzees suggests potential differences in the evolutionary development of communicative gestures.

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