The ontogeny of intentional communication in chimpanzees in the wild

Fröhlich, Marlen; Wittig, Roman M.; Pika, Simone

doi:10.1111/desc.12716

Cited by 24 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 85 publications

(183 reference statements)

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“…Building on pleas for more explicit cross‐modal study designs (Liebal et al, ; Townsend et al, ), Fröhlich, Wittig & Pika () recently provided the first study on the developmental trajectory of intentional communication in chimpanzees by using an multimodal approach. Both gestures and gesture–vocal combinations, but also vocal signals, were frequently accompanied by specific intentionality markers (i.e.…”

Section: Cognitive Mechanisms Identified In Non‐human Gestures and Vomentioning

confidence: 99%

Multimodal communication and language origins: integrating gestures and vocalizations

et al. 2019

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The presence of divergent and independent research traditions in the gestural and vocal domains of primate communication has resulted in major discrepancies in the definition and operationalization of cognitive concepts. However, in recent years, accumulating evidence from behavioural and neurobiological research has shown that both human and non‐human primate communication is inherently multimodal. It is therefore timely to integrate the study of gestural and vocal communication. Herein, we review evidence demonstrating that there is no clear difference between primate gestures and vocalizations in the extent to which they show evidence for the presence of key language properties: intentionality, reference, iconicity and turn‐taking. We also find high overlap in the neurobiological mechanisms producing primate gestures and vocalizations, as well as in ontogenetic flexibility. These findings confirm that human language had multimodal origins. Nonetheless, we note that in great apes, gestures seem to fulfil a carrying (i.e. predominantly informative) role in close‐range communication, whereas the opposite holds for face‐to‐face interactions of humans. This suggests an evolutionary shift in the carrying role from the gestural to the vocal stream, and we explore this transition in the carrying modality. Finally, we suggest that future studies should focus on the links between complex communication, sociality and cooperative tendency to strengthen the study of language origins.

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Section: Cognitive Mechanisms Identified In Non‐human Gestures and Vomentioning

confidence: 99%

Multimodal communication and language origins: integrating gestures and vocalizations

et al. 2019

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“…Our results suggest that the distress calls of infant chimpanzees may be acoustically rich enough to convey information about the external events triggering the calls, and as such, may help caregivers to make important intervention decisions. Undoubtedly, infant distress calls are interpreted by the recipients in combination with other signals such as gestures, postures and other conspecifics' reactions that often accompany them Byrne 2011, 2014;Fröhlich et al 2016Fröhlich et al , 2019Fröhlich and Hobaiter 2018). Mothers also probably make inferences about the needs of the infants from past knowledge of problems experienced by the infant.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A machine learning approach to infant distress calls and maternal behaviour of wild chimpanzees

et al. 2020

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Distress calls are an acoustically variable group of vocalizations ubiquitous in mammals and other animals. Their presumed function is to recruit help, but there has been much debate on whether the nature of the disturbance can be inferred from the acoustics of distress calls. We used machine learning to analyse episodes of distress calls of wild infant chimpanzees. We extracted exemplars from those distress call episodes and examined them in relation to the external event triggering them and the distance to the mother. In further steps, we tested whether the acoustic variants were associated with particular maternal responses. Our results suggest that, although infant chimpanzee distress calls are highly graded, they can convey information about discrete problems experienced by the infant and about distance to the mother, which in turn may help guide maternal parenting decisions. The extent to which mothers rely on acoustic cues alone (versus integrate other contextual-visual information) to decide upon intervening should be the focus of future research.

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“…This has been primarily conducted with apes (social-cognition flexibility of iconic gestures, Bohn et al, 2016;ontogeny, Fröhlich, Wittig, & Pika, 2019). For example, chimpanzees show markers of intentional communication production affected by the age, social and physical environment (e.g., identity of the dyadic partner, context), and are able to adjust their gestures according to the recipient's attentional state (Fröhlich et al, 2019). Intentional (Maestripieri, 1997).…”

Section: The Hypothesis Of Gestural Communicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It has been established that primate and human communication are produced and perceived in a multimodal way accompanied by nonlinguistic and nonverbal signals (gestures, hands, face and body, McNeill, 1992;Liebal et al, 2013). For example, chimpanzees produce and recognize bimodal communication (Parr, Cohen, & de Waal, 2005;Fröhlich et al, 2019;Taglialatela et al, 2015;Crockford et al, 2012Crockford et al, , 2017 to meet specific communicative ends (e.g., alternation of vocalizations with gaze monitoring).…”

Section: The Hypothesis Of Gestural Communicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More important than finding out which modality prevails over the other via unimodal studies, it is interesting to look through a multimodal approach at the emergent properties, such as pragmatism, iconicity or intentionality, coordinated across the multiple modalities, that have evolved from the abilities already present in our common ancestors, as well as the cognitive, social, and environmental parameters that affect them (Slocombe, Waller, & Liebal, 2011;Perlmann, 2017;Kendon, 2017;Fröhlich et al, 2019). In this respect, studying wild vervet monkeys with different group characteristics using a multimodal approach might therefore provide further insight into the linkage between social, ecological and communicative abilities to fulfill our understanding on how human language emerged and evolved.…”

Section: The Hypothesis Of Gestural Communicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Primates are living links to our past: The contribution of comparative studies with wild vervet monkeys to the field of social cognition

Mertz

Surreault²,

Waal

et al. 2019

Cortex

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By studying the behavior of nonhuman primates, particularly in wild settings, researchers have been able to investigate a range of cognitive abilities, shedding light on the evolution of certain aspects of cognition and revealing potential evolutionary precursors of many capacities considered uniquely human. Vervet monkeys (Chlorocebus pygerythrus) have been widely investigated due to their prevalence and their suitability for experimental testing in the wild with an ecologically valid approach that is not possible with many other primates, especially apes. Here we review advances in the understanding of a number of cognitive and behavioral processes that have been gleaned from studies conducted with wild vervet monkeys over the past half century, primarily focusing on social cognitive abilities. We direct our attention to three major areas of study; communication, cooperation and trade, and social learning. We discuss how findings from this species have contributed (and continue to contribute) to our understanding of the evolution of human cognitive capacities and suggest future avenues of research with this species.

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The ontogeny of intentional communication in chimpanzees in the wild

Cited by 24 publications

References 85 publications

Multimodal communication and language origins: integrating gestures and vocalizations

Multimodal communication and language origins: integrating gestures and vocalizations

A machine learning approach to infant distress calls and maternal behaviour of wild chimpanzees

Primates are living links to our past: The contribution of comparative studies with wild vervet monkeys to the field of social cognition

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