Gaze following and gaze priming in lemurs

Ruiz, April M.; Gómez, Juan Carlos; Roeder, Jean‐Jacques; Byrne, Richard W.

doi:10.1007/s10071-008-0202-z

Cited by 71 publications

(55 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…Overall lemurs were successful with cues regarding the positional orientation of their competitor (front/back of body, or head turned in profile), but were not above chance when the only information regarding which competitor could see them was whether a headband covered the eyes or mouth. These findings build on previous studies of social cognition in lemurs, and suggest that these primates are sensitive to a number of behavioral indications of others' perception [37,[54][55][56][57]. Further, our data suggest that skills in this domain are related to a species' typical group size, implicating a possible evolutionary relationship between sociality and cognitive skills for outcompeting others for access to contestable resources.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

Group size predicts social but not nonsocial cognition in lemurs

MacLean¹,

Sandel²,

Bray³

et al. 2013

PsycEXTRA Dataset

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The social intelligence hypothesis suggests that living in large social networks was the primary selective pressure for the evolution of complex cognition in primates. This hypothesis is supported by comparative studies demonstrating a positive relationship between social group size and relative brain size across primates. However, the relationship between brain size and cognition remains equivocal. Moreover, there have been no experimental studies directly testing the association between group size and cognition across primates. We tested the social intelligence hypothesis by comparing 6 primate species (total N = 96) characterized by different group sizes on two cognitive tasks. Here, we show that a species' typical social group size predicts performance on cognitive measures of social cognition, but not a nonsocial measure of inhibitory control. We also show that a species' mean brain size (in absolute or relative terms) does not predict performance on either task in these species. These data provide evidence for a relationship between group size and social cognition in primates, and reveal the potential for cognitive evolution without concomitant changes in brain size. Furthermore our results underscore the need for more empirical studies of animal cognition, which have the power to reveal species differences in cognition not detectable by proxy variables, such as brain size.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

Group size predicts social but not nonsocial cognition in lemurs

MacLean¹,

Sandel²,

Bray³

et al. 2013

PsycEXTRA Dataset

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“…For example Ruiz et al (2009) showed that lemurs co-orient with conspecific photographs to find hidden food but failed with humans (Anderson & Mitchell 1999). In addition, speciessuperiority in face perception is already known as an expertise effect for both humans and non-human primates (Tomonaga et al 1993;Parr et al 1998;Dahl et al 2009).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Differential sensitivity to conspecific and allospecific cues in chimpanzees and humans: a comparative eye-tracking study

2010

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Previous studies have shown that a variety of animals including humans are sensitive to social cues from others and shift their attention to the same objects attended to by others. However, little is known about how animals process conspecifics' and another species' actions, although primates recognize conspecific faces better than those of another species. In this study, using unrestrained eye-tracking techniques, we first demonstrated that conspecific social cues modulated looking behaviours of chimpanzees more than human cues, whereas human observers were equally sensitive to both species. Additionally, first pass gaze duration at the face indicates that chimpanzees looked at the chimpanzees' face longer than the human face, suggesting that chimpanzees might extract more referential information from a conspecific face. These results also imply that a unique ability for extracting referential information from a variety of social objects has emerged during human evolution.

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“…Similarly, studies with lemurs suggest that attention is a major factor in the success of nonhuman primates to pass the object choice task (RUIZ et al 2009). It may be that extensive communicative and cognitive testing serves to focus the apes' attention on these declarative cues within a testing paradigm.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Several studies utilizing this task have shown evidence of declarative comprehension in non-great apes including lemurs, dolphins, seals, goats, corvids, and canines (e.g. PACK and HERMAN 2007;RUIZ et al 2009;and see MIKLOSI and SOPRONI 2006 for a recent review). However, results from studies of great apes have been much less clear.…”

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confidence: 99%

Environment, methodology, and the object choice task in apes: Evidence for declarative comprehension and implications for the evolution of language

Lyn¹

2010

Journal of Evolutionary Psychology

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Abstract. The ability to comprehend purely informative (declarative) communications has been put forward by several researchers as a possible biological distinction between humans and our nearest evolutionary relatives, the great apes. Most studies that purport to show that great apes cannot comprehend declaratives utilize the object choice task as a basis of measurement and have relatively few subjects. Here we report on a large-scale study of chimpanzees and bonobos as well as a meta-analysis of earlier studies. The data from this large pool of subjects suggest that environmental and methodological differences greatly affect the ability of great apes on the object choice task. Therefore, it is unlikely that an adaptation for declarative comprehension drove the evolution of human language.Keywords: great apes, declarative communication, object choice task, chimpanzee, bonobos, evolution of language PINKER and BLOOM (1990) made the case that human language could have evolved through natural selection mechanisms. To extend this claim as far as possible, they begin their arguments under the assumption that no nonhuman animal has a homologous communicative system to human language, and therefore language evolved de novo in the human evolutionary line. However, to truly determine what environmental pressures may have led to the development of language, we must first delineate which abilities were selected for (were new to our line) and which were likely present in a common ancestor. One method of determining these prob-

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Gaze following and gaze priming in lemurs

Cited by 71 publications

References 35 publications

Group size predicts social but not nonsocial cognition in lemurs

Group size predicts social but not nonsocial cognition in lemurs

Differential sensitivity to conspecific and allospecific cues in chimpanzees and humans: a comparative eye-tracking study

Environment, methodology, and the object choice task in apes: Evidence for declarative comprehension and implications for the evolution of language

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