In general, individuals look where they attend and next intend to act. Many animals, including our own species, use observed gaze as a deictic ("pointing") cue to guide behavior. Among humans, these responses are reflexive and pervasive: they arise within a fraction of a second, act independently of task relevance, and appear to undergird our initial development of language and theory of mind. Human and nonhuman animals appear to share basic gaze-following behaviors, suggesting the foundations of human social cognition may also be present in nonhuman brains.

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Following gaze: gaze-following behavior as a window into social cognition.

There is a way of looking at the world which holds that the human mind and its contents are all that there is. The second edition of Richard Gregory’s lovely book does justice to the greatness of its subject and to its renowned predecessor. If Gilgamesh is the first book of the human heart, the Oxford Companion to the Mind is on a short-list of those dedicated to the heart’s more calculating running-mate. It makes good the dust-jacket’s boast that this is, indeed, an edition for the new century. The book’s compact and sober exterior belies a breadth and exuberance as astonishing as the paradoxes it celebrates. In the course of its 959 pages we are taken on a journey from the abacus to zombies, with stops along the way at such out-of-the-way places as the mysteries of the colour brown, the winning of chess endgames (and the blunders of Kasparov), why doubles are bad news, the legal validity of psychopaths, what the Buddha had to say about visual perception, the manners of conversing with kings (or carving a joint of meat), the history of the jigsaw puzzle, why Adzell the Wodenite was intrinsically good, and the scientific status of levitation and ghosts (whether Pepper’s ghost, or more homely apparitions). It would be almost true to say that all of human (mental) life is here, from the weightiest meditations on our past and our future, as individuals and as a species, to such ticklish subjects as, well, tickling. Nor does the Companion confine itself to mind as it is instantiated in human brains: the operation of other minds in our fellow creatures, and the possibility of future minds in our own digital creations, are themes treated at length.

The Companion’s honour roll of 316 authors (129 new to the present edition) have contributed universally readable, frequently entertaining, and sometimes historic pieces ranging in scope from definitions and brief vignettes to substantial essays. It is a measure of the eclecticism of this enterprise that the list of contributors includes, besides neuroscientists young and old, Beryl Bainbridge, Roger Penrose, and Patrick Moore. Alongside the exotic and the esoteric, the more traditional subject matter of the core brain sciences of neuroanatomy, neurophysiology and neuropsychology is solidly in evidence. The philosophical foundations of these disciplines, sometimes regarded by neuroscientists as diversions en route to the more serious business of molecules and MRIs, are here firmly in the foreground.

For all its erudition, the Companion has an endearing lightness of touch. The dialogue between the brain sciences, the arts and the greater religions emerges with clarity and verve. The book is commendably even-handed in its treatment of contemporary scientific and philosophical issues: the article on consciousness, perhaps the most notorious case in point, is presented as a symposium in which influential thinkers outline their respective positions. Plato would surely have approved. The inclusion of brief Lives provides a welcome historical context, conveying the poignancy and humour of the passing parade. The Lives exemplify the surefooted economy of style and expression which is a hallmark of the whole work: such mighty themes as ‘religion’ or ‘symbols’ are rendered with an epigrammatic freshness which is never merely facile. The book is a triumph of the editor’s art (that is, the art which disguises art).

Any criticisms will seem mean-spirited. The neurological entries could perhaps be more contemporary in places; and I was a little disappointed not to find an entry devoted to the thorny problem of ‘objects’ as the building blocks of the brain’s experience of the world. But no book can be all things to all men; and to mention such things is rather like quibbling that Raphael could not paint feet. This book will fill many rainy afternoons, and it will be an amiable and scholarly guide to realms I know nothing about. There must be few with an interest in the mind, whether amateur or professional, who would not consult it with profit and delight. To paraphrase Owen Chadwick (as quoted in the article on Adrian in the Companion), I am not sure what wisdom is, but whatever it is, this book must surely advance it.

The Oxford Companion to the Mind

Introduction and Theory * Male Aggression and Sexual Coercion of Females in Primates Martin N. Muller, Sonya M. Kahlenberg and Richard W. Wrangham * Evolution of Sexual Coercion with Respect to Sexual Selection and Sexual Conflict Theory Jana J. Watson-Capps * Inter-Sexual Conflict in Primates: Infanticide, Paternity Allocation, and the Role of Coercion Parry Clarke, Gauri Pradhan and Carel van Schaik Sexual Coercion and Mate Guarding in Non-Human Primates * Orangutans: Sexual Coercion Without Sexual Violence Cheryl Knott * Male Aggression Against Females in Mountain Gorillas: Courtship or Coercion? Martha Robbins * The Causes and Consequences of Male Aggression Directed at Female Chacma Baboons Dawn M. Kitchen, Jacinta C. Beehner, Thore J. Bergman, Dorothy L. Cheney, Catherine Crockford, Anne L. Engh, Julia Fischer, Robert M. Seyfarth and Roman M. Wittig * Female-Directed Aggression and Social Control in Spider Monkeys Andres Link, Anthony Di Fiore and Stephanie N. Spehar * Male Aggression Against Females and Sexual Coercion in Chimpanzees Martin N. Muller, Sonya M. Kahlenberg and Richard W. Wrangham * Sexual Coercion in Dolphin Consortships: a Comparison with Chimpanzees Richard C. Connor and Nicole L. Vollmer * Male Aggression toward Females in Hamadryas Baboons: Conditioning, Coercion, and Control Larissa Swedell and Amy Schreier Sexual Coercion and Mate Guarding in Humans * Coercive Violence by Human Males Against Their Female Partners Margo Wilson and Martin Daly * The Political Significance of Gender Violence Lars Rodseth and Shannon Novak * Intimate Wounds: Cranio-Facial Trauma in Women and Female Chimpanzees Shannon Novak and Mallorie Hatch * Human Rape: Revising Evolutionary Perspectives Melissa Emery Thompson Female Counterstrategies *"Friendship" with Males: A Female Counterstrategy to Infanticide in Chacma Baboons of the Okavango Delta Ryne Palombit * The Absence of Sexual Coercion in Bonobos Tommaso Paoli * Sexual Coercion, Patriarchal Violence and Law Diane L. Rosenfeld Summary and Conclusions * Sexual Coercion in Humans and Other Primates: The Road Ahead Richard W. Wrangham and Martin N. Muller * List of Contributors * Index

Sexual coercion in primates and humans : an evolutionary perspective on male aggression against females

Gaze following refers to the ability of an animal to orient its gaze direction to that of another organism. Such a behavior may be adaptive as it alerts the observer to important objects in the environment such as food or predators. This behavior has been shown in mammals and birds, but the evolutionary history and the distribution of this behavior throughout the animal kingdom remain unclear. Here, we show that a reptile, the red-footed tortoise (Geochelone carbonaria), is able to follow the gaze of a conspecific in a lookup task. Controls revealed that neither the mere presence of a conspecific nor the presentation of a light stimulus (without a demonstrator present) controlled the tortoises’ behavior. The findings indicate that the ability to follow gaze may be found in mammals, birds and reptiles and could have evolved before the amniotic line diverged, or may result from a general ability to learn.

Gaze following in the red-footed tortoise (Geochelone carbonaria)

A series of recent reports have questioned the ability of great apes to comprehend declarative communication and have suggested that this ability is biologically based and may have driven the evolution of human language. We tested three groups of differently reared chimpanzees and bonobos for their ability to understand declarative signals in an object-choice task. The scores of the two groups of apes that were reared in a sociolinguistically complex environment were significantly higher than the scores of the standard-reared group. The results further showed that bonobos did not outperform chimpanzees. Our results demonstrate that environmental factors, particularly access to a sociolinguistically rich environment, directly influence great apes' ability to comprehend declarative signals and suggest that, contrary to recent claims, apes have the biological capacity to utilize purely informative communication.

The Impact of Environment on the Comprehension of Declarative Communication in Apes

Although primates have often been found to co-orient visually with other individuals, members of these same species have usually failed to use co-orientation to find hidden food in object-choice experiments. This presents an evolutionary puzzle: what is the function of co-orientation if it is not used for a function as basic as locating resources? Co-orientation responses have not been systematically investigated in object-choice experiments, and requiring co-orientation with humans (as is typical in object-choice tasks) may underestimate other species’ abilities. Using an object-choice task with conspecific models depicted in photographs, we provide experimental evidence that two lemur species (Eulemur fulvus, n = 4, and Eulemur macaco, n = 2) co-orient with conspecifics. Secondly, by analysing together two measures that have traditionally been examined separately, we show that lemurs’ gaze following behaviour and ultimate choice are closely linked. Individuals were more likely to choose correctly after having looked in the same direction as the model, and thus chose objects correctly more often than chance. We propose a candidate system for the evolutionary origins of more complex gaze following: ‘gaze priming.’

Jean Jacques Roeder

Papers

Gaze following and gaze priming in lemurs.