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Early communicative gestures in human and chimpanzee 1-year-olds observed across diverse socioecological settings. Learn Behav 2023; 51:15-33. [PMID: 36441398 PMCID: PMC9971150 DOI: 10.3758/s13420-022-00553-1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 11/01/2022] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Abstract
We investigated the communicative gestures used by chimpanzee and human infants. In contrast to previous studies, we compared the species at the same age (12-14 months) and used multiple groups living in diverse socioecological settings for both species. We recorded gestures produced by infants and those produce by others and directed toward infants. We classified the gestures into the following types: human-usual, chimpanzee-usual, and species-common; and searched for within species and between species differences. We found no significant differences between groups or species in overall rates of infant-produced or infant-received gestures, suggesting that all of these infants produced and received gestures at similar levels. We did find significant differences, however, when we considered the three types of gesture. Chimpanzee infants produced significantly higher rates of chimpanzee-usual gestures, and human infants produced significantly higher rates of human-usual gestures, but there was no significant species difference in the species-common gestures. Reports of species differences in gesturing in young infants, therefore, could be influenced by investigators' choice of gesture type. Interestingly, we found that 1-year-old infants produced the gesture of "hold mutual gaze" and that the chimpanzee infants had a significantly higher rate than the human infants. We did not find strong evidence that the specific types of gestural environment experienced by young infants influenced the types of gestures that infants produce. We suggest that at this point in development (before human infants use lots of speech), nonverbal communicative gestures may be equally important for human and chimpanzee infants.
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Hopkins WD, Mulholland MM, Mareno MC, Webb SJN, Schapiro SJ. Neuroanatomical correlates of individual differences in the object choice task in chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes). Front Psychol 2022; 13:1057722. [PMID: 36507015 PMCID: PMC9732552 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1057722] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/29/2022] [Accepted: 10/25/2022] [Indexed: 11/26/2022] Open
Abstract
Declarative and imperative joint attention or joint engagement are important milestones in human infant development. These have been shown to be a significant predictor of later language development and are impaired in some individuals with, or at risk for, a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder. Comparatively, while chimpanzees and other great apes have been reported to engage in imperative joint attention, evidence of declarative joint attention remains unclear based on existing studies. Some have suggested that differences in methods of assessing joint attention may have an influence on performance in nonhuman primates. Here, we report data on a measure of receptive joint attention (object choice task) in a sample of captive chimpanzees. Chimpanzees, as a group, performed significantly better than chance. By contrast, when considering individual performance, there was no significant difference in the number of those who passed and those who failed. Using quantitative genetic analyses, we found that performance on the object choice task was not significantly heritable nor were there any significant effects of sex, rearing history, or colony. Lastly, we found significant differences in gray matter covariation, between those who passed or failed the task. Those who passed contributed more to gray matter covariation in several brain regions within the social brain network, consistent with hypotheses regarding the importance of these regions in human and nonhuman primate social cognition.
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Affiliation(s)
- William D. Hopkins
- Department of Comparative Medicine, Michale E. Keeling Center for Comparative Medicine and Research, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Bastrop, TX, United States,*Correspondence: William D. Hopkins,
| | - Michele M. Mulholland
- Department of Comparative Medicine, Michale E. Keeling Center for Comparative Medicine and Research, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Bastrop, TX, United States
| | - Mary Catherine Mareno
- Department of Comparative Medicine, Michale E. Keeling Center for Comparative Medicine and Research, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Bastrop, TX, United States
| | - Sarah J. Neal Webb
- Department of Comparative Medicine, Michale E. Keeling Center for Comparative Medicine and Research, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Bastrop, TX, United States
| | - Steven J. Schapiro
- Department of Comparative Medicine, Michale E. Keeling Center for Comparative Medicine and Research, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Bastrop, TX, United States,Department of Experimental Medicine, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
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Bard KA, Keller H, Ross KM, Hewlett B, Butler L, Boysen ST, Matsuzawa T. Joint Attention in Human and Chimpanzee Infants in Varied Socio-Ecological Contexts. Monogr Soc Res Child Dev 2022; 86:7-217. [PMID: 35355281 DOI: 10.1111/mono.12435] [Citation(s) in RCA: 19] [Impact Index Per Article: 9.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Abstract
Joint attention (JA) is an early manifestation of social cognition, commonly described as interactions in which an infant looks or gestures to an adult female to share attention about an object, within a positive emotional atmosphere. We label this description the JA phenotype. We argue that characterizing JA in this way reflects unexamined assumptions which are, in part, due to past developmental researchers' primary focus on western, middle-class infants and families. We describe a range of cultural variations in caregiving practices, socialization goals, and parenting ethnotheories as an essential initial step in viewing joint attention within inclusive and contextualized perspectives. We begin the process of conducting a decolonized study of JA by considering the core construct of joint attention (i.e., triadic connectedness) and adopting culturally inclusive definitions (labeled joint engagement [JE]). Our JE definitions allow for attention and engagement to be expressed in visual and tactile modalities (e.g., for infants experiencing distal or proximal caregiving), with various social partners (e.g., peers, older siblings, mothers), with a range of shared topics (e.g., representing diverse socialization goals, and socio-ecologies with and without toys), and with a range of emotional tone (e.g., for infants living in cultures valuing calmness and low arousal, and those valuing exuberance). Our definition of JE includes initiations from either partner (to include priorities for adult-led or child-led interactions). Our next foundational step is making an ecological commitment to naturalistic observations (Dahl, 2017, Child Dev Perspect, 11(2), 79-84): We measure JE while infants interact within their own physical and social ecologies. This commitment allows us to describe JE as it occurs in everyday contexts, without constraints imposed by researchers. Next, we sample multiple groups of infants drawn from diverse socio-ecological settings. Moreover, we include diverse samples of chimpanzee infants to compare with diverse samples of human infants, to investigate the extent to which JE is unique to humans, and to document diversity both within and between species. We sampled human infants living in three diverse settings. U.K. infants (n = 8) were from western, middle-class families living near universities in the south of England. Nso infants (n = 12) were from communities of subsistence farmers in Cameroon, Africa. Aka infants (n = 10) were from foraging communities in the tropical rain forests of Central African Republic, Africa. We coded behavioral details of JE from videotaped observations (taken between 2004 and 2010). JE occurred in the majority of coded intervals (Mdn = 68%), supporting a conclusion that JE is normative for human infants. The JA phenotype, in contrast, was infrequent, and significantly more common in the U.K. (Mdn = 10%) than the other groups (Mdn < 3%). We found significant within-species diversity in JE phenotypes (i.e., configurations of predominant forms of JE characteristics). We conclude that triadic connectedness is very common in human infants, but there is significant contextualization of behavioral forms of JE. We also studied chimpanzee infants living in diverse socio-ecologies. The PRI/Zoo chimpanzee infants (n = 7) were from captive, stable groups of mixed ages and sexes, and included 4 infants from the Chester Zoo, U.K. and 3 from the Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University, Japan. The Gombe chimpanzee infants (n = 12) were living in a dynamically changing, wild community in the Gombe National Park, Tanzania, Africa. Additionally, we include two Home chimpanzee infants who were reared from birth by a female scientist, in the combined U.S., middle-class contexts of home and university cognition laboratory. JE was coded from videotaped observations (taken between 1993 and 2006). JE occurred during the majority of coded intervals (Mdn = 64%), consistent with the position that JE is normative for chimpanzee infants. The JA phenotype, in contrast, was rare, but more commonly observed in the two Home chimpanzee infants (in 8% and 2% of intervals) than in other chimpanzee groups (Mdns = 0%). We found within-species diversity in the configurations comprising the JE phenotypes. We conclude that triadic connectedness is very common in chimpanzee infants, but behavioral forms of joint engagement are contextualized. We compared JE across species, and found no species-uniqueness in behavioral forms, JE characteristics, or JE phenotypes. Both human and chimpanzee infants develop contextualized social cognition. Within-species diversity is embraced when triadic connectedness is described with culturally inclusive definitions. In contrast, restricting definitions to the JA phenotype privileges a behavioral form most valued in western, middle-class socio-ecologies, irrespective of whether the interactions involve human or chimpanzee infants. Our study presents a model for how to decolonize an important topic in developmental psychology. Decolonization is accomplished by defining the phenomenon inclusively, embracing diversity in sampling, challenging claims of human-uniqueness, and having an ecological commitment to observe infant social cognition as it occurs within everyday socio-ecological contexts. It is essential that evolutionary and developmental theories of social cognition are re-built on more inclusive and decolonized empirical foundations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kim A Bard
- Department of Psychology, University of Portsmouth
| | - Heidi Keller
- Department of Human Sciences, Osnabrück University
| | | | - Barry Hewlett
- Department of Anthropology, Washington State University, Vancouver
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Demuru E, Clay Z, Norscia I. What makes us apes? The emotional building blocks of intersubjectivity in hominids. ETHOL ECOL EVOL 2022. [DOI: 10.1080/03949370.2022.2044390] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/18/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Elisa Demuru
- Laboratoire Dynamique du Langage, CNRS UMR 5596, University of Lyon 2, Lyon, France
- Équipe de Neuro-éthologie Sensorielle, ENES/CRNL, CNRS UMR 5292, Inserm UMR S 1028, University of Lyon/Saint-Étienne, Saint-Étienne, France
| | - Zanna Clay
- Department of Psychology, Durham University, South Road, Durham, DH1 3LE, UK
| | - Ivan Norscia
- Department of Life Sciences and Systems Biology, University of Torino, Torino, 10123, Italy
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Padrell M, Amici F, Córdoba MP, Giberga A, Broekman A, Almagro S, Llorente M. Artificial Termite-Fishing Tasks as Enrichment for Sanctuary-Housed Chimpanzees: Behavioral Effects and Impact on Welfare. Animals (Basel) 2021; 11:ani11102941. [PMID: 34679962 PMCID: PMC8532803 DOI: 10.3390/ani11102941] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/14/2021] [Revised: 10/06/2021] [Accepted: 10/07/2021] [Indexed: 12/20/2022] Open
Abstract
Simple Summary The welfare of captive animals is nowadays a topic of major concern. In order to express their natural behavioral repertoires, however, animals require complex environments and stimuli which are difficult to reproduce in captivity. To overcome this, environmental enrichment is considered one of the most successful tools to increase behavioral opportunities and enhance animal welfare. In this study, we explored whether providing an artificial termite-fishing task, and whether participation in this task, predicted changes in the solitary and social behavior of sanctuary-housed chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). We compared chimpanzee behavior when the enrichment was presented to different periods without enrichment. We found that the presence of the enrichment predicted an increase in tool use and feeding behavior and a decrease in inactivity, especially for those chimpanzees with higher participation. However, we did not detect significant changes in abnormal or self-directed behaviors. Furthermore, we found no variation in affiliation- or aggression-related behaviors, but social proximity increased in chimpanzees that participated more. Our results support previous studies demonstrating that artificial termite-fishing promotes species-typical behaviors in captive chimpanzees with no major effects on social activities. Abstract Artificial termite-fishing tasks are a common enrichment for captive great apes, promoting species-typical behaviors. Nonetheless, whether these activities are linked to changes in other behaviors and whether these changes persist over time has seldom been investigated. We assessed whether the use of an artificial termite-fishing task was linked to changes in the solitary behavior and social dynamics in two groups of sanctuary-housed chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Specifically, we compared chimpanzee behavior during eight enrichment sessions distributed over a two-month period, with similar periods before and after the introduction of the enrichment. Data were collected from combined interval and continuous sampling methods and were analyzed using generalized linear mixed models. We found that participation increased across sessions and that both enrichment and participation predicted an increase in tool use and feeding and a decrease in inactivity, which were all maintained throughout the sessions. Furthermore, participation was positively associated with social proximity, revealing a gathering effect of the task. However, neither enrichment nor participation were linked to changes in abnormal, self-directed, affiliation-related or aggression-related behaviors. Overall, our results support the hypothesis that artificial termite-fishing is a suitable enrichment for captive chimpanzees, maintaining the subjects’ interest and promoting species-typical behaviors, with no negative effects on social activities.
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Affiliation(s)
- Maria Padrell
- Departament de Psicologia, Facultat d’Educació i Psicologia, Universitat de Girona, 17004 Girona, Spain;
- Unitat de Recerca i Etologia, Fundació Mona, 17457 Riudellots de la Selva, Spain;
- Correspondence:
| | - Federica Amici
- Department of Human Behavior, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Ecology and Culture, Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany;
- Faculty of Life Science, Institute of Biology, University of Leipzig, Talstrasse 33, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany
| | - Maria Pau Córdoba
- Unitat de Recerca i Etologia, Fundació Mona, 17457 Riudellots de la Selva, Spain;
| | - Albert Giberga
- Fundació UdG, Innovació i Formació, Universitat de Girona, Carrer Pic de Peguera 11, 17003 Girona, Spain; (A.G.); (A.B.); (S.A.)
| | - Antonio Broekman
- Fundació UdG, Innovació i Formació, Universitat de Girona, Carrer Pic de Peguera 11, 17003 Girona, Spain; (A.G.); (A.B.); (S.A.)
| | - Susana Almagro
- Fundació UdG, Innovació i Formació, Universitat de Girona, Carrer Pic de Peguera 11, 17003 Girona, Spain; (A.G.); (A.B.); (S.A.)
| | - Miquel Llorente
- Departament de Psicologia, Facultat d’Educació i Psicologia, Universitat de Girona, 17004 Girona, Spain;
- Fundació UdG, Innovació i Formació, Universitat de Girona, Carrer Pic de Peguera 11, 17003 Girona, Spain; (A.G.); (A.B.); (S.A.)
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Graham KE, Buryn-Weitzel JC, Lahiff NJ, Wilke C, Slocombe KE. Detecting joint attention events in mother-infant dyads: Sharing looks cannot be reliably identified by naïve third-party observers. PLoS One 2021; 16:e0255241. [PMID: 34297777 PMCID: PMC8301644 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0255241] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/24/2021] [Accepted: 07/12/2021] [Indexed: 11/21/2022] Open
Abstract
Joint attention, or sharing attention with another individual about an object or event, is a critical behaviour that emerges in pre-linguistic infants and predicts later language abilities. Given its importance, it is perhaps surprising that there is no consensus on how to measure joint attention in prelinguistic infants. A rigorous definition proposed by Siposova & Carpenter (2019) requires the infant and partner to gaze alternate between an object and each other (coordination of attention) and exchange communicative signals (explicit acknowledgement of jointly sharing attention). However, Hobson and Hobson (2007) proposed that the quality of gaze between individuals is, in itself, a sufficient communicative signal that demonstrates sharing of attention. They proposed that observers can reliably distinguish “sharing”, “checking”, and “orienting” looks, but the empirical basis for this claim is limited as their study focussed on two raters examining looks from 11-year-old children. Here, we analysed categorisations made by 32 naïve raters of 60 infant looks to their mothers, to examine whether they could be reliably distinguished according to Hobson and Hobson’s definitions. Raters had overall low agreement and only in 3 out of 26 cases did a significant majority of the raters agree with the judgement of the mother who had received the look. For the looks that raters did agree on at above chance levels, look duration and the overall communication rate of the mother were identified as cues that raters may have relied upon. In our experiment, naïve third party observers could not reliably determine the type of look infants gave to their mothers, which indicates that subjective judgements of types of look should not be used to identify mutual awareness of sharing attention in infants. Instead, we advocate the use of objective behaviour measurement to infer that interactants know they are ‘jointly’ attending to an object or event, and believe this will be a crucial step in understanding the ontogenetic and evolutionary origins of joint attention.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kirsty E. Graham
- Department of Psychology, University of York, York, United Kingdom
- School of Psychology & Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, United Kingdom
- * E-mail:
| | | | - Nicole J. Lahiff
- Department of Psychology, University of York, York, United Kingdom
| | - Claudia Wilke
- Department of Psychology, University of York, York, United Kingdom
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7
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Bourjade M, Cochet H, Molesti S, Guidetti M. Is Conceptual Diversity an Advantage for Scientific Inquiry? A Case Study on the Concept of 'Gesture' in Comparative Psychology. Integr Psychol Behav Sci 2021; 54:805-832. [PMID: 32207081 DOI: 10.1007/s12124-020-09516-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 02/06/2023]
Abstract
Growing scientific fields often involve multidisciplinary investigations in which the same concepts may have different meanings. Here, we examine the case of 'gesture' in comparative research to depict how conceptual diversity hidden by the label 'gesture' can lead to consistently divergent interpretations in humans and nonhuman primates. We show that definitions of 'gesture' drastically differ regarding the forms of a gesture and the cognitive processes inferred from it, and that these differences emerge from implicit assumptions which have pervasive consequences on the interpretations claimed by researchers. We then demonstrate that implicit assumptions about scientific concepts can be made explicit using a finite set of operational criteria. We argue that developing theoretical definitions systematically associated with operational conceptual boundaries would allow to tackle both the challenges of maintaining high internal coherence within studies and of improving comparability and replicability of scientific results. We thus offer an easy-to-implement conceptual tool that should help ground valid comparisons between studies and serve scientific inquiry.
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Affiliation(s)
- Marie Bourjade
- CLLE - Cognition, Langues, Langage, Ergonomie, Université de Toulouse, CNRS, Toulouse, 31058, France.
| | - Hélène Cochet
- CLLE - Cognition, Langues, Langage, Ergonomie, Université de Toulouse, CNRS, Toulouse, 31058, France
| | - Sandra Molesti
- CLLE - Cognition, Langues, Langage, Ergonomie, Université de Toulouse, CNRS, Toulouse, 31058, France
- PSYCLE EA3273, Aix-Marseille Université, Aix-en-Provence, France
| | - Michèle Guidetti
- CLLE - Cognition, Langues, Langage, Ergonomie, Université de Toulouse, CNRS, Toulouse, 31058, France
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Schubiger MN, Fichtel C, Burkart JM. Validity of Cognitive Tests for Non-human Animals: Pitfalls and Prospects. Front Psychol 2020; 11:1835. [PMID: 32982822 PMCID: PMC7488350 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01835] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/30/2020] [Accepted: 07/03/2020] [Indexed: 01/04/2023] Open
Abstract
Comparative psychology assesses cognitive abilities and capacities of non-human animals and humans. Based on performance differences and similarities in various species in cognitive tests, it is inferred how their minds work and reconstructed how cognition might have evolved. Critically, such species comparisons are only valid and meaningful if the tasks truly capture individual and inter-specific variation in cognitive abilities rather than contextual variables that might affect task performance. Unlike in human test psychology, however, cognitive tasks for non-human primates (and most other animals) have been rarely evaluated regarding their measurement validity. We review recent studies that address how non-cognitive factors affect performance in a set of commonly used cognitive tasks, and if cognitive tests truly measure individual variation in cognitive abilities. We find that individual differences in emotional and motivational factors primarily affect performance via attention. Hence, it is crucial to systematically control for attention during cognitive tasks to obtain valid and reliable results. Aspects of test design, however, can also have a substantial effect on cognitive performance. We conclude that non-cognitive factors are a minor source of measurement error if acknowledged and properly controlled for. It is essential, however, to validate and eventually re-design several primate cognition tasks in order to ascertain that they capture the cognitive abilities they were designed to measure. This will provide a more solid base for future cognitive comparisons within primates but also across a wider range of non-human animal species.
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Affiliation(s)
- Michèle N. Schubiger
- Evolutionary Cognition Group, Department of Anthropology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
- World Ape Fund, London, United Kingdom
| | - Claudia Fichtel
- Behavioural Ecology and Sociobiology Unit, German Primate Center, Göttingen, Germany
- Leibniz ScienceCampus “Primate Cognition”, Göttingen, Germany
| | - Judith M. Burkart
- Evolutionary Cognition Group, Department of Anthropology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
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9
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Krause MA, Beran MJ. Words matter: Reflections on language projects with chimpanzees and their implications. Am J Primatol 2020; 82:e23187. [DOI: 10.1002/ajp.23187] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/27/2020] [Revised: 07/26/2020] [Accepted: 08/08/2020] [Indexed: 11/06/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Mark A. Krause
- Department of Psychology Southern Oregon University Ashland Oregon
| | - Michael J. Beran
- Department of Psychology, Language Research Center Georgia State University Atlanta Georgia
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10
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Padrell M, Riba D, Úbeda Y, Amici F, Llorente M. Personality, cognition and behavior in chimpanzees: a new approach based on Eysenck's model. PeerJ 2020; 8:e9707. [PMID: 32874782 PMCID: PMC7439959 DOI: 10.7717/peerj.9707] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/10/2020] [Accepted: 07/22/2020] [Indexed: 11/20/2022] Open
Abstract
Personality has been linked to individual variation in interest and performance in cognitive tasks. Nevertheless, this relationship is still poorly understood and has rarely been considered in animal cognition research. Here, we investigated the association between personality and interest, motivation and task performance in 13 sanctuary chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) housed at Fundació Mona (Spain). Personality was assessed with a 12-item questionnaire based on Eysenck's Psychoticism-Extraversion-Neuroticism model completed by familiar keepers and researchers. Additionally, personality ratings were compared to behavioral observations conducted over an 11-year period. Experimental tasks consisted in several puzzle boxes that needed to be manipulated in order to obtain a food reward. Dependent variables included participation (as an indicator of interest), success and latency (as measures of performance), and losing contact with the task (as an indicator of motivation). As predicted, we obtained significant correlations between Eysenck's personality traits and observed behaviors, although some expected associations were absent. We then analyzed data using Generalized Linear Mixed Models, running a model for each dependent variable. In both sexes, lower Extraversion and lower Dominance were linked to a higher probability of success, but this effect was stronger in females. Furthermore, higher Neuropsychoticism predicted higher probability of success in females, but not in males. The probability of losing contact with the task was higher in young chimpanzees, and in those rated lower on Extraversion and higher on Dominance. Additionally, chimpanzees rated higher on Neuropsychoticism were also more likely to stop interacting with the task, but again this was more evident in females. Participation and latency were not linked to any personality trait. Our findings show that the PEN may be a good model to describe chimpanzee personality, and stress the importance of considering personality when interpreting the results of cognitive research in non-human primates.
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Affiliation(s)
- Maria Padrell
- Facultat d’Educació i Psicologia, Universitat de Girona, Girona, Spain
- Unitat de Recerca i Etologia, Fundació Mona, Girona, Spain
| | - David Riba
- Unitat de Recerca i Etologia, Fundació Mona, Girona, Spain
- Facultat de Lletres, Universitat de Girona, Girona, Spain
| | - Yulán Úbeda
- Facultat d’Educació i Psicologia, Universitat de Girona, Girona, Spain
| | - Federica Amici
- Research Group “Primate Behavioural Ecology”, Department of Human Behavior, Ecology and Culture, Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Miquel Llorente
- Facultat d’Educació i Psicologia, Universitat de Girona, Girona, Spain
- Unitat de Recerca i Etologia, Fundació Mona, Girona, Spain
- IPRIM, Institut de Recerca i Estudis en Primatologia, Girona, Spain
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Snell-Rood E, Snell-Rood C. The developmental support hypothesis: adaptive plasticity in neural development in response to cues of social support. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2020; 375:20190491. [PMID: 32475336 PMCID: PMC7293157 DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2019.0491] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 04/20/2020] [Indexed: 12/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Across mammals, cues of developmental support, such as touching, licking or attentiveness, stimulate neural development, behavioural exploration and even overall body growth. Why should such fitness-related traits be so sensitive to developmental conditions? Here, we review what we term the 'developmental support hypothesis', a potential adaptive explanation of this plasticity. Neural development can be a costly process, in terms of time, energy and exposure. However, environmental variability may sometimes compromise parental care during this costly developmental period. We propose this environmental variation has led to the evolution of adaptive plasticity of neural and behavioural development in response to cues of developmental support, where neural development is stimulated in conditions that support associated costs. When parental care is compromised, offspring grow less and adopt a more resilient and stress-responsive strategy, improving their chances of survival in difficult conditions, similar to existing ideas on the adaptive value of early-life programming of stress. The developmental support hypothesis suggests new research directions, such as testing the adaptive value of reduced neural growth and metabolism in stressful conditions, and expanding the range of potential cues animals may attend to as indicators of developmental support. Considering evolutionary and ecologically appropriate cues of social support also has implications for promoting healthy neural development in humans. This article is part of the theme issue 'Life history and learning: how childhood, caregiving and old age shape cognition and culture in humans and other animals'.
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Affiliation(s)
- Emilie Snell-Rood
- Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, University of Minnesota, 1479 Gortner Avenue, Gortner 140, St Paul, MN 55108, USA
| | - Claire Snell-Rood
- School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
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12
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Most CA, Strum SC. Bringing up baby: Maternal responsiveness, secondary attachments, and the development of infant social competence in wild olive baboons (Papio anubis). Dev Psychobiol 2020; 62:963-978. [PMID: 32374036 DOI: 10.1002/dev.21973] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/15/2019] [Revised: 02/22/2020] [Accepted: 03/02/2020] [Indexed: 11/12/2022]
Abstract
Caregiver responsiveness and presence of secondary attachments play a crucial role in children's socio-cognitive and emotional development, but little is known of their effect on the development of non-human primates. Here we present the results of a 16-month behavioral study conducted on 22 wild infant olive baboons (Papio anubis) at the Uaso Ngiro Baboon Project, Kenya. This is the first study to examine the effects of maternal responsiveness and secondary attachments on the development of infant social behavior in a wild primate species that does not breed cooperatively. The data track maternal responsiveness and the rates of two behavioral indicators of infant social competence-orienting toward interactions and social play-over the course of the first year of life. Maternal responsiveness decreased as infants grew older, while infant orientation toward interactions and play behavior increased. Infants with poorly responsive mothers were more likely to have secondary attachments, and infants with secondary attachments to siblings oriented more frequently to social interactions than those with secondary attachments to adult/subadult males or with no secondary attachments. These findings indicate that variation in maternal responsiveness and presence of secondary attachments can influence the development of social competence in olive baboon infants.
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Affiliation(s)
- Corinna A Most
- Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA
| | - Shirley C Strum
- Department of Anthropology, University of California, San Diego, CA, USA.,Uaso Ngiro Baboon Project, Nairobi, Kenya.,Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), Nairobi, Kenya
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Schuppli C, van Noordwijk M, Atmoko SU, van Schaik C. Early sociability fosters later exploratory tendency in wild immature orangutans. SCIENCE ADVANCES 2020; 6:eaaw2685. [PMID: 31934618 PMCID: PMC6949034 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aaw2685] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/21/2019] [Accepted: 11/11/2019] [Indexed: 06/10/2023]
Abstract
Exploration is essential for skill acquisition and strongly facilitates cognitive performance. In humans, it is widely known that exploration and later cognitive performance are highly dependent on early social inputs. Here, we aim to shed light on the evolutionary roots of this process by studying the effects of variation in opportunities for social learning on the exploratory tendency of immature orangutans (Pongo spp.) in nature. We based our analyses on mixed cross-sectional, longitudinal data of exploration by immatures and their mothers. Current exploration rates were correlated with levels of past experienced sociability, but not with current food abundance or with maternal condition, and only partly with genetic similarity. We conclude that the dependence of cognitive development on socially triggered exploration, which underlies the construction of cognitive skills such as intelligence, existed before the emergence of the human lineage.
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Affiliation(s)
- Caroline Schuppli
- Department of Anthropology, University of Zürich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, 8057 Zürich, Switzerland
- Leipzig Research Center for Early Child Development, Leipzig University, Jahnallee 59, 04109 Leipzig, Germany
| | - Maria van Noordwijk
- Department of Anthropology, University of Zürich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, 8057 Zürich, Switzerland
| | - Suci Utami Atmoko
- Fakultas Biologi, Universitas Nasional, Jl. Sawo Manila, RT.14/RW.3, Ps. Minggu, DKI Jakarta, Indonesia
| | - Carel van Schaik
- Department of Anthropology, University of Zürich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, 8057 Zürich, Switzerland
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15
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Dezecache G, Crockford C, Zuberbühler K. The development of communication in alarm contexts in wild chimpanzees. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 2019; 73:104. [PMID: 31346303 PMCID: PMC6612320 DOI: 10.1007/s00265-019-2716-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/01/2019] [Revised: 06/14/2019] [Accepted: 06/19/2019] [Indexed: 11/24/2022]
Abstract
ABSTRACT Animals have evolved a range of communicative behaviours in the presence of danger. Although the mechanisms and functions of some of these behaviours have been relatively well researched, comparatively little is known about their ontogeny, including how animals learn to inform social partners about impending danger. In adult chimpanzees, behaviours in response to dangers involve several channels, particularly alarm calls and simultaneous gaze alternations with nearby recipients. Gaze alternations may allow inexperienced individuals to learn from more experienced ones by assessing their reactions to unfamiliar objects or events, but they may also provide the basis for more advanced social referencing. Here, we were interested in the development of these two common behaviours, alarm calling and gaze alternations, in wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) confronted with a threat. Using a cross-sectional design, we investigated those in 8 infant and 8 juveniles by experimentally exposing them to an unfamiliar but potentially dangerous object, a large, remotely controlled, moving spider model. For alarm calling, we found a positive relation with age, starting at around 28 months, although alarm calls were not consistently emitted until after 80 months. For gaze alternations, we found no age effect, with some of the youngest infants already showing the behaviour. Although its function remains unclear in infant and juvenile chimpanzees, gaze alternations emerge early in chimpanzee development. Alarm calling may require more advanced developmental stages, such as greater perceptual abilities, categorical capacities or more sophisticated social cognition, i.e. an understanding that danger is a collective experience that requires communication. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Alarm calling and other anti-predatory behaviours have been the topic of much research but their ontogenies are still poorly described and understood. Recent studies on the behaviour of wild chimpanzees in threatening contexts have suggested sophisticated social cognitive abilities in adults. How do these behaviours develop in ontogeny? We addressed this question using a field experiment with 8 infants and 8 juveniles exposed to a novel and potentially threatening object in their natural habitat. We found that gaze alternations are present in some of the youngest individuals, potentially revealing early social awareness in chimpanzees. Age did not have an effect on the presence of gaze alternation. We also found that alarm calling was more common in older individuals, suggesting that call production and context of usage must be learnt. We discuss our results in light of developmental theories of social cognition and the role of social learning in the primate lineage.
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Affiliation(s)
- Guillaume Dezecache
- Institut Jean Nicod, Département d’études cognitives, ENS, EHESS, CNRS, PSL Research University, Paris, France
- Budongo Conservation Field Station, Masindi, Uganda
- Department of Experimental Psychology, University College London, London, UK
| | - Catherine Crockford
- Department of Primatology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Klaus Zuberbühler
- Budongo Conservation Field Station, Masindi, Uganda
- Institute of Biology, Université de Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland
- School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Scotland, UK
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16
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Leavens DA, Bard KA, Hopkins WD. The mismeasure of ape social cognition. Anim Cogn 2019; 22:487-504. [PMID: 28779278 PMCID: PMC6647540 DOI: 10.1007/s10071-017-1119-1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 50] [Impact Index Per Article: 10.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/31/2016] [Revised: 07/08/2017] [Accepted: 07/25/2017] [Indexed: 11/26/2022]
Abstract
In his classic analysis, Gould (The mismeasure of man, WW Norton, New York, 1981) demolished the idea that intelligence was an inherent, genetic trait of different human groups by emphasizing, among other things, (a) its sensitivity to environmental input, (b) the incommensurate pre-test preparation of different human groups, and (c) the inadequacy of the testing contexts, in many cases. According to Gould, the root cause of these oversights was confirmation bias by psychometricians, an unwarranted commitment to the idea that intelligence was a fixed, immutable quality of people. By virtue of a similar, systemic interpretive bias, in the last two decades, numerous contemporary researchers in comparative psychology have claimed human superiority over apes in social intelligence, based on two-group comparisons between postindustrial, Western Europeans and captive apes, where the apes have been isolated from European styles of social interaction, and tested with radically different procedures. Moreover, direct comparisons of humans with apes suffer from pervasive lapses in argumentation: Research designs in wide contemporary use are inherently mute about the underlying psychological causes of overt behavior. Here we analyze these problems and offer a more fruitful approach to the comparative study of social intelligence, which focuses on specific individual learning histories in specific ecological circumstances.
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Affiliation(s)
- David A Leavens
- School of Psychology, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9QH, UK.
| | - Kim A Bard
- University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK
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Clark H, Elsherif MM, Leavens DA. Ontogeny vs. phylogeny in primate/canid comparisons: A meta-analysis of the object choice task. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 2019; 105:178-189. [PMID: 31170434 DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2019.06.001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/27/2019] [Revised: 05/25/2019] [Accepted: 06/02/2019] [Indexed: 10/26/2022]
Abstract
The Object Choice Task (OCT) is a widely used paradigm with which researchers measure the ability of a subject to comprehend deictic (directional) cues, such as pointing gestures and eye gaze. There is a widespread belief that nonhuman primates evince only a weak capacity to use deictic cues; in contrast, domestic dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) tend to demonstrate high success rates. This pattern of canid superiority has been taken to support the Domestication Hypothesis, which posits enhancing effects of artificial selection on the sociocognitive abilities of dogs and humans. Here we review nearly two decades of published findings, using variants of the OCT. We find systematic confounds with species classification in task-relevant preparation of the subjects, in the imposition of a barrier between reward and subject, and in the specific deictic cues used to indicate the location of hidden objects. Thus, the widespread belief that dogs outperform primates on OCTs is undermined by the systematic procedural differences in the assessments of these skills, differences that are confounded with taxonomic classification.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hannah Clark
- School of Psychology, University of Sussex, Falmer, East Sussex, BN1 9QH, United Kingdom
| | - Mahmoud M Elsherif
- School of Psychology, University of Sussex, Falmer, East Sussex, BN1 9QH, United Kingdom; School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT, United Kingdom
| | - David A Leavens
- School of Psychology, University of Sussex, Falmer, East Sussex, BN1 9QH, United Kingdom.
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18
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Siposova B, Carpenter M. A new look at joint attention and common knowledge. Cognition 2019; 189:260-274. [PMID: 31015079 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2019.03.019] [Citation(s) in RCA: 44] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/12/2018] [Revised: 02/12/2019] [Accepted: 03/26/2019] [Indexed: 10/27/2022]
Abstract
Everyone agrees that joint attention is a key feature of human social cognition. Yet, despite over 40 years of work and hundreds of publications on this topic, there is still surprisingly little agreement on what exactly joint attention is, and how the jointness in it is achieved. Part of the problem, we propose, is that joint attention is not a single process, but rather it includes a cluster of different cognitive skills and processes, and different researchers focus on different aspects of it. A similar problem applies to common knowledge. Here we present a new approach: We outline a typology of social attention levels which are currently all referred to in the literature as joint attention (from monitoring to common, mutual, and shared attention), along with corresponding levels of common knowledge. We consider cognitive, behavioral, and phenomenological aspects of the different levels as well as their different functions, and a key distinction we make in all of this is second-personal vs. third-personal relations. While we focus mainly on joint attention and common knowledge, we also briefly discuss how these levels might apply to other 'joint' mental states such as joint goals.
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Affiliation(s)
- Barbora Siposova
- School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Scotland, UK; Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.
| | - Malinda Carpenter
- School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Scotland, UK; Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
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20
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Manipulating social cues in baboon gesture learning: what does it tell us about the evolution of communication? Anim Cogn 2018; 22:113-125. [DOI: 10.1007/s10071-018-1227-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/22/2018] [Revised: 11/07/2018] [Accepted: 11/24/2018] [Indexed: 02/05/2023]
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21
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Clay AW, Bard KA, Bloomsmith MA. Effects of sex and early rearing condition on adult behavior, health, and well-being in captive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Behav Processes 2018; 156:58-76. [DOI: 10.1016/j.beproc.2017.06.011] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/23/2017] [Accepted: 06/29/2017] [Indexed: 02/07/2023]
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23
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Bard KA, Hopkins WD. Early Socioemotional Intervention Mediates Long-Term Effects of Atypical Rearing on Structural Covariation in Gray Matter in Adult Chimpanzees. Psychol Sci 2018; 29:594-603. [PMID: 29381427 PMCID: PMC5902648 DOI: 10.1177/0956797617740685] [Citation(s) in RCA: 22] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/05/2022] Open
Abstract
Atypical rearing has deleterious effects on chimpanzee behavior during development, some of which can be ameliorated with a responsive care intervention (RCI). Here, we obtained in vivo magnetic resonance images of adult brains of 27 chimpanzees given institutional care, with and without RCI, and compared them with those of 16 chimpanzees mother-reared from birth. We found significant long-term rearing effects on structural covariation and gray matter volume, specifically in the basal forebrain (i.e., caudate, putamen, nucleus accumbens, rectus gyrus, and orbital prefrontal cortex), indicating that RCI prevented brain changes due to atypical rearing. A significant correlation between covariation in these brain areas and caregiver nurturing, experienced in the first month of life, suggests a possible developmental mechanism for the effect of early experience on brain networks. We identified an early intervention that prevents changes in the basal forebrain that otherwise emerge as a consequence of institutionalized rearing without species-typical socioemotional experiences.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kim A Bard
- 1 Department of Psychology, University of Portsmouth
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24
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The gesture 'Touch': Does meaning-making develop in chimpanzees' use of a very flexible gesture? Anim Cogn 2017; 22:535-550. [PMID: 29063986 PMCID: PMC6647888 DOI: 10.1007/s10071-017-1136-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 18] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/26/2017] [Revised: 09/20/2017] [Accepted: 10/03/2017] [Indexed: 02/07/2023]
Abstract
In this bottom-up study of gesture, we focused on the details of a single gesture, Touch. We compared characteristics of use by three young chimpanzees with those of 11 adults, their interactive partners, housed in a semi-natural social group at the Kyoto University Primate Research Institute (KUPRI) in Japan. Five hundred eighty-one observations of the gesture Touch were collected across a four-year time span. This single gesture had 36 different forms, was directed to 70 different target locations on the body of social partners, and occurred in 26 different contexts. Significant differences were found between infant and adult initiators in the form, target locations, and contexts of the gesture Touch. There was a wide diversity in form–location patterns within each context, and there were no form–location patterns specific to particular contexts. Thus, we demonstrate that this gesture exhibits flexibility in form and flexibility in use. The results from this study illustrate the importance of contextualized meaning in understanding flexibility in the gesture use of great apes.
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Cortina M. Adaptive Flexibility, Cooperation, and Prosocial Motivations: The Emotional Foundations of Becoming Human. PSYCHOANALYTIC INQUIRY 2017. [DOI: 10.1080/07351690.2017.1362920] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/18/2022]
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26
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Simpson EA, Sclafani V, Paukner A, Kaburu SSK, Suomi SJ, Ferrari PF. Handling newborn monkeys alters later exploratory, cognitive, and social behaviors. Dev Cogn Neurosci 2017; 35:12-19. [PMID: 28844729 PMCID: PMC5817041 DOI: 10.1016/j.dcn.2017.07.010] [Citation(s) in RCA: 24] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/28/2017] [Revised: 07/30/2017] [Accepted: 07/30/2017] [Indexed: 11/02/2022] Open
Abstract
Touch is one of the first senses to develop and one of the earliest modalities for infant-caregiver communication. While studies have explored the benefits of infant touch in terms of physical health and growth, the effects of social touch on infant behavior are relatively unexplored. Here, we investigated the influence of neonatal handling on a variety of domains, including memory, novelty seeking, and social interest, in infant monkeys (Macaca mulatta; n=48) from 2 to 12 weeks of age. Neonates were randomly assigned to receive extra holding, with or without accompanying face-to-face interactions. Extra-handled infants, compared to standard-reared infants, exhibited less stress-related behavior and more locomotion around a novel environment, faster approach of novel objects, better working memory, and less fear towards a novel social partner. In sum, infants who received more tactile stimulation in the neonatal period subsequently demonstrated more advanced motor, social, and cognitive skills-particularly in contexts involving exploration of novelty-in the first three months of life. These data suggest that social touch may support behavioral development, offering promising possibilities for designing future early interventions, particularly for infants who are at heightened risk for social disorders.
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Affiliation(s)
- Elizabeth A Simpson
- Department of Psychology, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, USA; Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health, Poolesville, MD, USA; Dipartimento di Neuroscienze, Università di Parma, Parma, Italy.
| | - Valentina Sclafani
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health, Poolesville, MD, USA; Dipartimento di Neuroscienze, Università di Parma, Parma, Italy; Winnicott Research Unit, University of Reading, Reading, UK
| | - Annika Paukner
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health, Poolesville, MD, USA
| | - Stefano S K Kaburu
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health, Poolesville, MD, USA; Dipartimento di Neuroscienze, Università di Parma, Parma, Italy; University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA
| | - Stephen J Suomi
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health, Poolesville, MD, USA
| | - Pier F Ferrari
- Dipartimento di Neuroscienze, Università di Parma, Parma, Italy; Institut des Sciences Cognitives Marc Jeannerod, National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), Lyon, France; Université Claude Bernard Lyon, France
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27
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Bard KA. Dyadic interactions, attachment and the presence of triadic interactions in chimpanzees and humans. Infant Behav Dev 2017; 48:13-19. [DOI: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2016.11.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/02/2015] [Revised: 11/01/2016] [Accepted: 11/01/2016] [Indexed: 10/20/2022]
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28
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Lamaury A, Cochet H, Bourjade M. Acquisition of joint attention by olive baboons gesturing toward humans. Anim Cogn 2017; 22:567-575. [PMID: 28695348 DOI: 10.1007/s10071-017-1111-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/20/2017] [Revised: 06/13/2017] [Accepted: 07/04/2017] [Indexed: 10/19/2022]
Abstract
Joint attention is a core ability of human social cognition which broadly refers to the coordination of attention with both the presence and activity of social partners. In both human and non-human primates, joint attention can be assessed from behaviour; gestures and gaze alternation between the partner and a distal object are standard behavioural manifestations of joint attention. Here we examined the acquisition of joint attention in olive baboons as a function of their individual experience of a human partner's attentional states during training regimes. Eleven olive baboons (Papio anubis) were observed during their training to perform food-requesting gestures, which occurred either by (1) a human facing them (face condition), or (2) by a human positioned in profile who never turned to them (profile condition). We found neither gestures nor gaze alternation were present at the start of the training but rather developed over the training period. Only baboons in the face condition showed an increase in the number of gaze alternations, and their gaze pattern progressively shifted to a coordinated sequence in which gazes and gestures were coordinated in time. In contrast, baboons trained by a human in profile showed significantly less coordination of gazes with gestures but still learned to request food with their gestures. These results suggest that the partner's social attention plays an important role in the acquisition of visual joint attention and, to a lesser extent, in gesture learning in baboons. Interspecific interactions appear to offer rich opportunities to manipulate and thus identify the social contexts in which socio-communicative skills develop.
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Affiliation(s)
- Augustine Lamaury
- UMR 5263 Cognition Langues Langage Ergonomie - Laboratoire Travail et Cognition (CLLE-LTC) Maison de la recherche C-616, Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès, 5 allées Antonio Machado, 31058, Toulouse Cedex, France
| | - Hélène Cochet
- UMR 5263 Cognition Langues Langage Ergonomie - Laboratoire Travail et Cognition (CLLE-LTC) Maison de la recherche C-616, Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès, 5 allées Antonio Machado, 31058, Toulouse Cedex, France
| | - Marie Bourjade
- UMR 5263 Cognition Langues Langage Ergonomie - Laboratoire Travail et Cognition (CLLE-LTC) Maison de la recherche C-616, Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès, 5 allées Antonio Machado, 31058, Toulouse Cedex, France.
- Station de Primatologie UPS 846, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Rousset, France.
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Schneider C, Liebal K, Call J. "Giving" and "responding" differences in gestural communication between nonhuman great ape mothers and infants. Dev Psychobiol 2017; 59:303-313. [PMID: 28323346 PMCID: PMC5434908 DOI: 10.1002/dev.21495] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/31/2016] [Accepted: 11/30/2016] [Indexed: 12/03/2022]
Abstract
In the first comparative analysis of its kind, we investigated gesture behavior and response patterns in 25 captive ape mother–infant dyads (six bonobos, eight chimpanzees, three gorillas, and eight orangutans). We examined (i) how frequently mothers and infants gestured to each other and to other group members; and (ii) to what extent infants and mothers responded to the gestural attempts of others. Our findings confirmed the hypothesis that bonobo mothers were more proactive in their gesturing to their infants than the other species. Yet mothers (from all four species) often did not respond to the gestures of their infants and other group members. In contrast, infants “pervasively” responded to gestures they received from their mothers and other group members. We propose that infants’ pervasive responsiveness rather than the quality of mother investment and her responsiveness may be crucial to communication development in nonhuman great apes.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Katja Liebal
- Comparative Developmental Psychology, Department of Education and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Josep Call
- Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.,School of Psychology & Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK
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30
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Damerius LA, Forss SIF, Kosonen ZK, Willems EP, Burkart JM, Call J, Galdikas BMF, Liebal K, Haun DBM, van Schaik CP. Orientation toward humans predicts cognitive performance in orang-utans. Sci Rep 2017; 7:40052. [PMID: 28067260 PMCID: PMC5220318 DOI: 10.1038/srep40052] [Citation(s) in RCA: 31] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/11/2016] [Accepted: 11/30/2016] [Indexed: 11/09/2022] Open
Abstract
Non-human animals sometimes show marked intraspecific variation in their cognitive abilities that may reflect variation in external inputs and experience during the developmental period. We examined variation in exploration and cognitive performance on a problem-solving task in a large sample of captive orang-utans (Pongo abelii &P. pygmaeus, N = 103) that had experienced different rearing and housing conditions during ontogeny, including human exposure. In addition to measuring exploration and cognitive performance, we also conducted a set of assays of the subjects' psychological orientation, including reactions towards an unfamiliar human, summarized in the human orientation index (HOI), and towards novel food and objects. Using generalized linear mixed models we found that the HOI, rather than rearing background, best predicted both exploration and problem-solving success. Our results suggest a cascade of processes: human orientation was accompanied by a change in motivation towards problem-solving, expressed in reduced neophobia and increased exploration variety, which led to greater experience, and thus eventually to higher performance in the task. We propose that different experiences with humans caused individuals to vary in curiosity and understanding of the physical problem-solving task. We discuss the implications of these findings for comparative studies of cognitive ability.
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Affiliation(s)
- Laura A Damerius
- Anthropological Institute and Museum, University of Zurich, Switzerland
| | - Sofia I F Forss
- Anthropological Institute and Museum, University of Zurich, Switzerland
| | - Zaida K Kosonen
- Anthropological Institute and Museum, University of Zurich, Switzerland
| | - Erik P Willems
- Anthropological Institute and Museum, University of Zurich, Switzerland
| | - Judith M Burkart
- Anthropological Institute and Museum, University of Zurich, Switzerland
| | - Josep Call
- School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St. Andrews, United Kingdom
| | | | - Katja Liebal
- Department of Education and Psychology, Freie University Berlin, Germany
| | - Daniel B M Haun
- Leipzig Research Center for Early Child Development, University of Leipzig, Germany
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Mother-infant interactions in captive and wild chimpanzees. Infant Behav Dev 2016; 48:20-29. [PMID: 27887738 DOI: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2016.11.008] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/02/2015] [Revised: 11/02/2016] [Accepted: 11/02/2016] [Indexed: 11/20/2022]
Abstract
We review studies on mother-infant interactions in chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, in captive and wild environments. Infant cognitive development is formed through mother-infant interactions during the long dependent period, which is approximately 5 years. Patterns of interaction between mothers and infants are different from those observed in adult chimpanzees. Mother-infant interactions are relatively altruistic, although solicitation by infants is almost always required. Active teaching has rarely been reported in chimpanzees; instead, infants socially learn new skills through long-term observation. Case studies describing rearing of a disabled infant by a multiparous but inexperienced chimpanzee, and the carrying of dead infants in the wild chimpanzees of Bossou reveal the strong affectionate bond between mothers and infants. Characteristics of human mother-infant interaction are highlighted through comparisons with chimpanzees.
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32
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Kalcher-Sommersguter E, Preuschoft S, Franz-Schaider C, Hemelrijk CK, Crailsheim K, Massen JJM. Early maternal loss affects social integration of chimpanzees throughout their lifetime. Sci Rep 2015; 5:16439. [PMID: 26552576 PMCID: PMC4639738 DOI: 10.1038/srep16439] [Citation(s) in RCA: 20] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/17/2015] [Accepted: 10/14/2015] [Indexed: 11/17/2022] Open
Abstract
The long-term effects of early adverse experiences on later psychosocial functioning are well described in humans, but sparsely documented for chimpanzees. In our earlier studies, we investigated the effects of maternal and social deprivation on three groups of ex-laboratory chimpanzees who experienced either an early or later onset of long-term deprivation. Here we expand our research by adding data on subjects that came from two stable zoo groups. The groups comprised of early maternally deprived wild-caught chimpanzees and non-deprived zoo-born chimpanzees. We found that compared to zoo chimpanzees, ex-laboratory chimpanzees were more restricted regarding their association partners in the newly formed groups, but not during their second year of group-life, indicating that social stability has an important influence on the toleration of association partners close-by. Social grooming activity, however, was impaired in early long-term deprived ex-laboratory chimpanzees as well as in early maternally deprived zoo chimpanzees compared to non-deprived zoo chimpanzees. Thus, we conclude that early maternal loss has lifelong effects on the social integration of chimpanzees which becomes evident in their grooming networks. Although the retrospective nature of our study prevents a clear causal explanation, our results are of importance for understanding the development of social competence in chimpanzees.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Signe Preuschoft
- Competence Center Apes, Four Paws, Linke Wienzeile 236, 1150 Vienna, Austria
| | | | - Charlotte K Hemelrijk
- Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences, University of Groningen, Nijenborgh 7, 9747 AG Groningen, The Netherlands
| | - Karl Crailsheim
- Institute of Zoology, University of Graz, Universitaetsplatz 2, 8010 Graz, Austria
| | - Jorg J M Massen
- Department of Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna, Althanstrasse 14, 1090 Vienna, Austria.,Department of Animal Ecology, Utrecht University, Padualaan 8, 3584 CH Utrecht, The Netherlands
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Leavens DA, Reamer LA, Mareno MC, Russell JL, Wilson D, Schapiro SJ, Hopkins WD. Distal Communication by Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes): Evidence for Common Ground? Child Dev 2015; 86:1623-38. [PMID: 26292996 PMCID: PMC4697278 DOI: 10.1111/cdev.12404] [Citation(s) in RCA: 18] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/27/2022]
Abstract
van der Goot et al. (2014) proposed that distal, deictic communication indexed the appreciation of the psychological state of a common ground between a signaler and a receiver. In their study, great apes did not signal distally, which they construed as evidence for the human uniqueness of a sense of common ground. This study exposed 166 chimpanzees to food and an experimenter, at an angular displacement, to ask, "Do chimpanzees display distal communication?" Apes were categorized as (a) proximal or (b) distal signalers on each of four trials. The number of chimpanzees who communicated proximally did not statistically differ from the number who signaled distally. Therefore, contrary to the claim by van der Goot et al., apes do communicate distally.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Lisa A Reamer
- Michale E. Keeling Center for Comparative Medicine and Research
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Abstract
It is a truism to say that primates develop, but it is also important to acknowledge that development occurs across many domains, including motor behavior, socioemotional behavior, communication, and cognition. In this review, we focus on those aspects of development that impact social cognition outcomes in infancy. Triadic engagements, such as those of joint attention, cooperation, and intentional communication, develop in the first year of life in chimpanzees and humans. Joint attention, for example, occurs when infants coordinate their attention to a social partner while also attending to an object or event. Hominoids are strongly influenced by experiences during early development, especially experiences that are foundational for these coordinated triadic engagements. Purported species differences in triadic engagements are highlighted in current evolutionary theories of primate social cognition, but conclusions about species differences are unfounded when development is ignored. Developmental experiences must be matched, controlled, or systematically varied in experimental designs that make cross-species comparisons. Considerations of development, across species and across rearing experiences, would contribute to more accurate evolutionary theories of primate social cognition.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kim A. Bard
- Psychology Department, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, Hampshire PO1 2DY, United Kingdom
| | - David A. Leavens
- School of Psychology, University of Sussex, Falmer, East Sussex BN1 9QH, United Kingdom
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Leavens DA, Sansone J, Burfield A, Lightfoot S, O’Hara S, Todd BK. Putting the "Joy" in joint attention: affective-gestural synchrony by parents who point for their babies. Front Psychol 2014; 5:879. [PMID: 25161640 PMCID: PMC4129495 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00879] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/29/2014] [Accepted: 07/23/2014] [Indexed: 11/21/2022] Open
Abstract
Despite a growing body of work examining the expression of infants' positive emotion in joint attention contexts, few studies have examined the moment-by-moment dynamics of emotional signaling by adults interacting with babies in these contexts. We invited 73 parents of infants (three fathers) to our laboratory, comprising parent-infant dyads with babies at 6 (n = 15), 9 (n = 15), 12 (n = 15), 15 (n = 14), and 18 (n = 14) months of age. Parents were asked to sit in a chair centered on the long axis of a room and to point to distant dolls (2.5 m) when the dolls were animated, while holding their children in their laps. We found that parents displayed the highest levels of smiling at the same time that they pointed, thus demonstrating affective/referential synchrony in their infant-directed communication. There were no discernable differences in this pattern among parents with children of different ages. Thus, parents spontaneously encapsulated episodes of joint attention with positive emotion.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Jo Sansone
- School of Psychology, University of Sussex, East SussexUK
| | - Anna Burfield
- School of Psychology, University of Sussex, East SussexUK
| | - Sian Lightfoot
- School of Psychology, University of Sussex, East SussexUK
| | | | - Brenda K. Todd
- School of Psychology, University of Sussex, East SussexUK
- Department of Psychology, City University LondonLondon, UK
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Ross KM, Bard KA, Matsuzawa T. Playful expressions of one-year-old chimpanzee infants in social and solitary play contexts. Front Psychol 2014; 5:741. [PMID: 25104942 PMCID: PMC4109582 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00741] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/30/2014] [Accepted: 06/25/2014] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Knowledge of the context and development of playful expressions in chimpanzees is limited because research has tended to focus on social play, on older subjects, and on the communicative signaling function of expressions. Here we explore the rate of playful facial and body expressions in solitary and social play, changes from 12- to 15-months of age, and the extent to which social partners match expressions, which may illuminate a route through which context influences expression. Naturalistic observations of seven chimpanzee infants (Pan troglodytes) were conducted at Chester Zoo, UK (n = 4), and Primate Research Institute, Japan (n = 3), and at two ages, 12 months and 15 months. No group or age differences were found in the rate of infant playful expressions. However, modalities of playful expression varied with type of play: in social play, the rate of play faces was high, whereas in solitary play, the rate of body expressions was high. Among the most frequent types of play, mild contact social play had the highest rates of play faces and multi-modal expressions (often play faces with hitting). Social partners matched both infant play faces and infant body expressions, but play faces were matched at a significantly higher rate that increased with age. Matched expression rates were highest when playing with peers despite infant expressiveness being highest when playing with older chimpanzees. Given that playful expressions emerge early in life and continue to occur in solitary contexts through the second year of life, we suggest that the play face and certain body behaviors are emotional expressions of joy, and that such expressions develop additional social functions through interactions with peers and older social partners.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kirsty M. Ross
- Department of Psychology, University of WinchesterWinchester, UK
- Department of Psychology, Centre for Comparative and Evolutionary Psychology, University of PortsmouthPortsmouth, UK
| | - Kim A. Bard
- Department of Psychology, Centre for Comparative and Evolutionary Psychology, University of PortsmouthPortsmouth, UK
| | - Tetsuro Matsuzawa
- Department of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Primate Research Institute, Kyoto UniversityKyoto, Japan
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Hiolle A, Lewis M, Cañamero L. Arousal regulation and affective adaptation to human responsiveness by a robot that explores and learns a novel environment. Front Neurorobot 2014; 8:17. [PMID: 24860492 PMCID: PMC4030164 DOI: 10.3389/fnbot.2014.00017] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/26/2013] [Accepted: 04/14/2014] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
In the context of our work in developmental robotics regarding robot-human caregiver interactions, in this paper we investigate how a "baby" robot that explores and learns novel environments can adapt its affective regulatory behavior of soliciting help from a "caregiver" to the preferences shown by the caregiver in terms of varying responsiveness. We build on two strands of previous work that assessed independently (a) the differences between two "idealized" robot profiles-a "needy" and an "independent" robot-in terms of their use of a caregiver as a means to regulate the "stress" (arousal) produced by the exploration and learning of a novel environment, and (b) the effects on the robot behaviors of two caregiving profiles varying in their responsiveness-"responsive" and "non-responsive"-to the regulatory requests of the robot. Going beyond previous work, in this paper we (a) assess the effects that the varying regulatory behavior of the two robot profiles has on the exploratory and learning patterns of the robots; (b) bring together the two strands previously investigated in isolation and take a step further by endowing the robot with the capability to adapt its regulatory behavior along the "needy" and "independent" axis as a function of the varying responsiveness of the caregiver; and (c) analyze the effects that the varying regulatory behavior has on the exploratory and learning patterns of the adaptive robot.
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Affiliation(s)
- Antoine Hiolle
- Embodied Emotion, Cognition, and (Inter-)Action Lab, School of Computer Science and STRI, University of Hertfordshire Hatfield, UK
| | - Matthew Lewis
- Embodied Emotion, Cognition, and (Inter-)Action Lab, School of Computer Science and STRI, University of Hertfordshire Hatfield, UK
| | - Lola Cañamero
- Embodied Emotion, Cognition, and (Inter-)Action Lab, School of Computer Science and STRI, University of Hertfordshire Hatfield, UK
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Davila-Ross M, Hutchinson J, Russell JL, Schaeffer J, Billard A, Hopkins WD, Bard KA. Triggering social interactions: chimpanzees respond to imitation by a humanoid robot and request responses from it. Anim Cogn 2014; 17:589-95. [PMID: 24096704 PMCID: PMC4410976 DOI: 10.1007/s10071-013-0689-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/18/2013] [Revised: 09/19/2013] [Accepted: 09/25/2013] [Indexed: 10/26/2022]
Abstract
Even the most rudimentary social cues may evoke affiliative responses in humans and promote social communication and cohesion. The present work tested whether such cues of an agent may also promote communicative interactions in a nonhuman primate species, by examining interaction-promoting behaviours in chimpanzees. Here, chimpanzees were tested during interactions with an interactive humanoid robot, which showed simple bodily movements and sent out calls. The results revealed that chimpanzees exhibited two types of interaction-promoting behaviours during relaxed or playful contexts. First, the chimpanzees showed prolonged active interest when they were imitated by the robot. Second, the subjects requested 'social' responses from the robot, i.e. by showing play invitations and offering toys or other objects. This study thus provides evidence that even rudimentary cues of a robotic agent may promote social interactions in chimpanzees, like in humans. Such simple and frequent social interactions most likely provided a foundation for sophisticated forms of affiliative communication to emerge.
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Affiliation(s)
- Marina Davila-Ross
- Centre for Comparative and Evolutionary Psychology, Psychology Department, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK,
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