Understanding communicative intentions and semiotic vehicles by children and chimpanzees

Zlatev, Jordan; Madsen, Elainie; Lenninger, Sara; Persson, Tomas; Sayehli, Susan; Sonesson, Göran; Weijer, Joost van de

doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2013.05.001

Cited by 39 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…At the time of testing, the participants had experienced few previous experimental tests, and none requiring object exchange. One chimpanzee, Maria-Magdalena, and one orangutan, Naong, had previously taken part in a planning experiment involving selection of items from a tray (Osvath and Osvath, 2008), and the chimpanzee Manda had experience of choice procedures from participation in an object-choice task (Zlatev et al, 2013). In addition, Naong had extensive experience of various object-choice procedures, requiring the selection of items ( unpublished ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Great apes can defer exchange: a replication with different results suggesting future oriented behavior

Osvath

Persson

2013

Front. Psychol.

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The topic of cognitive foresight in non-human animals has received considerable attention in the last decade. The main questions concern whether the animals can prepare for upcoming situations which are, to various degrees, contextually or sensorially detached from the situation in which the preparations are made. Studies on great apes have focused on tool-related tasks, e.g., the ability to select a tool which is functional only in the future. Dufour and Sterck (2008), however, investigated whether chimpanzees were also able to prepare for a future exchange with a human: an object exchanged for a food item. The study included extensive training on the exchangeable item, which is traditionally not compatible with methods for studying planning abilities, as associative learning cannot be precluded. Nevertheless, despite this training, the chimpanzees could not solve the deferred exchange task. Given that great apes can plan for tool use, these results are puzzling. In addition, claims that great ape foresight is highly limited has been based on this study (Suddendorf and Corballis, 2010). Here we partly replicated Dufour and Sterck's study to discern whether temporally deferred and spatially displaced exchange tasks are beyond the capabilities of great apes. In addition to chimpanzees we tested orangutans. One condition followed the one used by Dufour and Sterck, in which the exchange items, functional only in the future, are placed at a location that freely allows for selections by the subjects. In order to test the possibility that the choice set-up could explain the negative results in Dufour and Sterck's study, our second condition followed a method used in the planning study by Osvath and Osvath (2008), where the subjects make a forced one-item-choice from a tray. We found that it is within the capabilities of chimpanzees and orangutans to perform deferred exchange in both conditions.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Great apes can defer exchange: a replication with different results suggesting future oriented behavior

Osvath

Persson

2013

Front. Psychol.

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“…It seems unlikely, however, that children had difficulty understanding the communicative act of using the markers as such, in light of previous research and in light of the present findings. On the one hand, previous research has shown that from 30 months or earlier, children understand markers as communicative gestures in similar tasks (Tomasello, Call, & Gluckman, ; Zlatev et al, ). And in the present study, children's above‐chance successful searches in the cue‐familiarization game (when only one cue was provided per trial) indicate that children understood the iconic markers as communicative gestures.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making sense of conflicting information: A touchscreen paradigm to measure young children's selective trust

Hermes

Rakoczy

Behne

2018

Infant and Child Development

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Much recent research has shown that children from age 4 onwards reveal a robust preference for reliable over unreliable informants when choosing whom to trust and learn from. Findings concerning selective model choice in children younger than 4 years have mostly been mixed. The present study developed a new touchscreen‐based paradigm with reduced task demands in order to test 2‐ and 3‐year‐old children (N = 48). Results showed that 3‐year‐olds selectively endorsed information from a previously reliable rather than a previously unreliable informant when searching for objects whereas 2‐year‐olds just followed the first hint even if provided by an unreliable informant. Whether the lack of selective model choice in 2‐year‐olds reflects competence or performance deficits remains to be clarified. But the present results do suggest that 3‐years‐olds have the basic competence to selectively choose reliable over unreliable informants that may have been masked in some previous studies by task demands. Highlights The paper develops a novel touchscreen‐based search paradigm to test young children's selective trust with reduced task demands. Three‐year‐olds chose selectively between conflicting hints, whereas 2‐year‐olds followed the first hint even if provided by an unreliable informant.

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“…Starting out from semiotics, however, I have argued that signs showing a direction are only a subcategory of those relying on contiguity (Sonesson 1989(Sonesson : 47, 1998. In an experiment (Zlatev et al 2013), we tried to separate mere contiguity from vectoriality (directionality), in the form of a marker and pointing, respectively. Interestingly, René Thom (1973) conceives indexicality in terms of the forward thrust of the arrow-head as imagined in water or the sentiment of its slipping from our hands.…”

Section: Indexicality and Directionmentioning

confidence: 99%

157. Some issues in the semiotics of gesture: The perspective of comparative semiotics

Sonesson¹

2014

Handbücher Zur Sprach- Und Kommunikationswissenschaft / Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science (HSK) 38/2

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Semiotics is basically about differences and similarities between different vehicles for conveying meaning. On the one hand, questions formulated in other semiotic domains may be of interest to the study of gesture; on the other hand, answers to these questions within the study of gesture are important to general semiotics. Here we will be looking at the nature of signs as opposed to other meanings, as well as to actions. We will also scrutinize indexicality as contiguity and as directionality, as well as whether it precedes or results from the act of signification. Without going deeply into the nature of the iconic scale, we will consider the relevance to gesture of the distinction between primary and secondary iconicity, and of the hierarchies of the world taken for granted.

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Understanding communicative intentions and semiotic vehicles by children and chimpanzees

Cited by 39 publications

References 35 publications

Great apes can defer exchange: a replication with different results suggesting future oriented behavior

Great apes can defer exchange: a replication with different results suggesting future oriented behavior

Making sense of conflicting information: A touchscreen paradigm to measure young children's selective trust

157. Some issues in the semiotics of gesture: The perspective of comparative semiotics

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