Chimpanzees: Joint Visual Attention
TL;DR: Experimental results that chimpanzees display the effect in response to both movement of the head and eyes in concert and eye movement alone are reported, indicating that this capacity may have arisen because of its reproductive payoffs in the context of social competition with conspecifics, predation avoidance, or both.
Abstract: Gaze following is a behavior that draws the human infant into perceptual contact with objects or events in the world to which others are attending One interpretation of the development of this phenomenon is that it signals the emergence of joint or shared attention, which may be critical to the development of theory of mind An alternative interpretation is that gaze following is a noncognitive mechanism that exploits social stimuli in order to orient the infant (or adult) to important events in the world We report experimental results that chimpanzees display the effect in response to both movement of the head and eyes in concert and eye movement alone Additional tests indicate that chimpanzees appear able to (a) project an imaginary line of sight through invisible space and (b) understand how that line of sight can be impeded by solid, opaque objects This capacity may have arisen because of its reproductive payoffs in the context of social competition with conspecifics, predation avoidance, or both
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TL;DR: It is argued and present evidence that great apes understand the basics of intentional action, but they still do not participate in activities involving joint intentions and attention (shared intentionality), and children's skills of shared intentionality develop gradually during the first 14 months of life.
Abstract: We propose that the crucial difference between human cognition and that of other species is the ability to participate with others in collaborative activities with shared goals and intentions: shared intentionality. Participation in such activities requires not only especially powerful forms of intention reading and cultural learning, but also a unique motivation to share psychological states with oth- ers and unique forms of cognitive representation for doing so. The result of participating in these activities is species-unique forms of cultural cognition and evolution, enabling everything from the creation and use of linguistic symbols to the construction of social norms and individual beliefs to the establishment of social institutions. In support of this proposal we argue and present evidence that great apes (and some children with autism) understand the basics of intentional action, but they still do not participate in activities involving joint intentions and attention (shared intentionality). Human children's skills of shared intentionality develop gradually during the first 14 months of life as two ontogenetic pathways intertwine: (1) the general ape line of understanding others as animate, goal-directed, and intentional agents; and (2) a species-unique motivation to share emotions, experience, and activities with other persons. The develop- mental outcome is children's ability to construct dialogic cognitive representations, which enable them to participate in earnest in the collectivity that is human cognition.
3,660 citations
Cites background from "Chimpanzees: Joint Visual Attention..."
...…(Okamoto et al. 2002; Tomasello et al. 1998), they check back with the looker (and eventually quit looking) if nothing is there (Call et al. 1998; Povinelli & Eddy 1996; Tomasello et al. 2001), and they even follow the gaze direction of humans to targets behind barriers (Tomasello et al. 1999)....
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...It is one form of primate cognition, but it seems totally unique as people go around talking and writing and playing symphonies and doing math and building buildings and engaging in rituals and paying bills BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2005) 28:5 689...
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TL;DR: The conclusion for the moment is that chimpanzees understand others in terms of a perception-goal psychology, as opposed to a full-fledged, human-like belief-desire psychology.
2,718 citations
TL;DR: The hypothesis that gaze following is "hard-wired" in the brain, and may be localized within a circuit linking the superior temporal sulcus, amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex is discussed.
1,714 citations
Cites background from "Chimpanzees: Joint Visual Attention..."
...Povinelli and Eddy [122,123] suggested that following another individual's gaze might be an automatic response and form part of a primitive orienting re ̄ex (POR)....
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...Povinelli and Eddy [121,122,123,125] in their experiments concluded that chimpanzees can follow a human experimenter's gaze, but not use that information to learn about objects in the world or the amental stateo of the individual providing the gaze cues (see next section)....
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...In a further series of experiments, Povinelli and Eddy [123] obstructed the subjects' line of sight with an opaque shield....
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TL;DR: Evidence from recent neurophysiological studies that suggests that the eyes constitute a special stimulus in at least two senses is reviewed, suggesting that the structure of the eyes is such that it provides us with a particularly powerful signal to the direction of another person's gaze.
838 citations
TL;DR: Chimpanzees know what conspecifics have and have not seen (do and do not know), and that they use this information to devise effective social-cognitive strategies.
799 citations
Cites background from "Chimpanzees: Joint Visual Attention..."
...First, chimpanzees given the choice of begging from a human who can see them versus one who cannot chose indiscriminately in all but the simplest conditions (Povinelli & Eddy 1996a; Reaux et al. 1999)....
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References
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TL;DR: This paper showed an adult chimpanzee a series of videotaped scenes of a human actor struggling with a variety of problems, some of which were simple, such as bananas vertically or horizontally out of reach, behind a box, and so forth; others were more complex, involving an actor unable to extricate himself from a locked cage, shivering because of a malfunctioning heater, or unable to play a phonograph because it was unplugged.
Abstract: An individual has a theory of mind if he imputes mental states to himself and others. A system of inferences of this kind is properly viewed as a theory because such states are not directly observable, and the system can be used to make predictions about the behavior of others. As to the mental states the chimpanzee may infer, consider those inferred by our own species, for example, purpose or intention, as well as knowledge, belief, thinking, doubt, guessing, pretending, liking, and so forth. To determine whether or not the chimpanzee infers states of this kind, we showed an adult chimpanzee a series of videotaped scenes of a human actor struggling with a variety of problems. Some problems were simple, involving inaccessible food – bananas vertically or horizontally out of reach, behind a box, and so forth – as in the original Kohler problems; others were more complex, involving an actor unable to extricate himself from a locked cage, shivering because of a malfunctioning heater, or unable to play a phonograph because it was unplugged. With each videotape the chimpanzee was given several photographs, one a solution to the problem, such as a stick for the inaccessible bananas, a key for the locked up actor, a lit wick for the malfunctioning heater. The chimpanzee's consistent choice of the correct photographs can be understood by assuming that the animal recognized the videotape as representing a problem, understood the actor's purpose, and chose alternatives compatible with that purpose.
5,979 citations
TL;DR: A travelling salesman found himself spending the night at home with his wife when one of his trips was unexpectedly cancelled, and he leapt out from the bed, ran across the room and jumped out the window.
5,176 citations
TL;DR: For several years the study of social behavior has been undergoing a revolution with far-reaching consequences for the social and biological sciences, partly due to growing acceptance of the evidence that the potency of natural selection is overwhelmingly concentrated at levels no higher than that of the individual.
Abstract: For several years the study of social behavior has been undergoing a revolution with far-reaching consequences for the social and biological sciences. Partly responsible are three recent changes in the attitudes of evolutionary biologists. First was growing acceptance of the evidence that the potency of natural selection is overwhelmingly concentrated at levels no higher than that of the individual. Second was revival of the comparative method, especially as applied to behavior and life histories. Third was spread of the realization that not only are all aspects of structure and function of organisms to be understood solely as products of selection, but because of their peculiarly direct relationship to the forces of selection, behavior and life history phenomena, long neglected by the evolutionists, may be among the most predictable of all phenotypic attributes. These ideas have been appreciated by a few biologists for a long time, but they have only recently begun to characterize the science as a whole. Darwin’s discussion of sterility between species as an incidental effect of evolutionary adaptation (41, p. 260) and his refusal to deal with sex ratio selection (42, p. 399) suggest awareness of the difficult problem of determining the levels at which selection is most powerful. Yet significant clarification of this basic issue did not really commence until publication of Wynne-Edwards’ massive volume (179) championing group selection and inadvertently exposing its unlikelihood. As late as 1958, Fisher felt constrained to add to the revised edition of his 1929 classic, The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, the admonishment (53, p. 49) that his fundamental theorem and its associated considerations, already misused then by decades of population geneticists dealing (as they saw it) with the fitness of populations, refer strictly to "the progressive modification of structure or function only in so far as variations in these are ofadvantage to the individual... [and afford] no corresponding explanation for any properties of animals and plants.., supposed to be of service to the species to which they belong." Williams’ critique (171) provided a significant turning point. Nevertheless, one has only to pick up any biological journal or attend any biological meeting to realize that this question has not yet been settled for all
3,216 citations
TL;DR: In the second year of human life, a child's knowledge of a real situation is apparently contradicted and distorted by pretense as discussed by the authors, leading to the emergence of the ability to pretend.
Abstract: One of the major developments of the second year of human life is the emergence of the ability to pretend. A child's knowledge of a real situation is apparently contradicted and distorted by pretense. If, as generally assumed, the child is just beginning to construct a system for internally representing such knowledge, why is this system of representation not undermined by its use in both comprehending and producing pretense? In this article I present a theoretical analysis of the representational mechanism underlying this ability. This mechanism extends the power of the infant's existing capacity for (primary) representation, creating a capacity for metarepresentation. It is this, developing toward the end of infancy, that underlies the child's new abilities to pretend and to understand pretense in others. There is a striking isomorphism between the three fundamental forms of pretend play and three crucial logical properties of mental state expressions in language. This isomorphism points to a common underlying form of internal representation that is here called metarepresentation. A performance model, the decoupler, is outlined embodying ideas about how an infant might compute the complex function postulated to underlie pretend play. This model also reveals pretense as an early manifestation of the ability to understand mental states. Aspects of later preschool development, both normal and abnormal, are discussed in the light of the new model. This theory begins the task of characterizing the specific innate basis of our commonsense "theory of mind."
2,929 citations
"Chimpanzees: Joint Visual Attention..." refers background in this paper
...Researchers interested in the development of these aspects of the child's theory of mind have recently explored the development of the young child's conceptual understanding of symbolic play, desire, visual perception, appearance and reality, sources of knowledge, representational change, and false belief (Flavell, Everett, Croft, & Flavell, 1981; Flavell, Green, & Flavell, 1993; Gopnik & Graf, 1988; Gopnik & Slaughter, 1991; Harris, 1991; Leslie, 1987; Lillard, 1993; Perner, 1991; Wellman, 1990; Wimmer, Hogrefe, & Perner, 1988; Wimmer & Perner, 1983). The term theory of mind originated from the work of Premack and Woodruff (1978), who experimentally investigated the capacity of a chimpanzee to attribute desires to others....
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...Researchers interested in the development of these aspects of the child's theory of mind have recently explored the development of the young child's conceptual understanding of symbolic play, desire, visual perception, appearance and reality, sources of knowledge, representational change, and false belief (Flavell, Everett, Croft, & Flavell, 1981; Flavell, Green, & Flavell, 1993; Gopnik & Graf, 1988; Gopnik & Slaughter, 1991; Harris, 1991; Leslie, 1987; Lillard, 1993; Perner, 1991; Wellman, 1990; Wimmer, Hogrefe, & Perner, 1988; Wimmer & Perner, 1983)....
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Book•
24 Apr 1991
TL;DR: In this paper, a model of writing in cognitive development is proposed to provide an integrated account of children's understanding of representational and mental processes, which is crucial in their acquisition of our commonsense psychology.
Abstract: A model of writing in cognitive development, Understanding the Representational Mind synthesizes the burgeoning literature on the child's theory of mind to provide an integrated account of children's understanding of representational and mental processes, which is crucial in their acquisition of our commonsense psychology. Perrier describes experimental work on children's acquisition of a theory of mind and representation, offers a theoretical account of this acquisition, and gives examples of how the increased sophistication in children's theory of mind improves their understanding of social interaction and how, in the case of autistic children, an impairment results in social ineptitude. He analyzes the concepts of representation and metarepresentation as they appear in current discussion in the philosophy of cognitive science and explains how the unfolding of mental representation enables infants to comprehend change over time, engage in pretence, and use representational systems like pictures and language. Perrier goes on to show that around age four children become able to understand the representational nature of pictures and language and to distinguish appearance from reality. Introducing basic distinctions in philosophy of mind for characterizing the mental, Perrier discusses differences in how commonsense and cognitive psychology view the mind. Tracing the onset of a commonsense psychology in the social and emotional awareness of early infancy, he reveals how the child begins to take a cognitive, representational view of the mind with repercussions for children's episodic memory, self control, and their ability to engage in deception. Perrier concludes by describing the observed developmental changes as a case of theory change And contrasts his thesis with competing proposals.
2,264 citations