Reflexive gaze following in common marmoset monkeys (original) (raw)
Related papers
The ontogeny of gaze following in chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes, and rhesus macaques, Macaca mulatta
Animal Behaviour, 2001
Primates follow the gaze direction of conspecifics to outside objects. We followed the ontogeny of this social-cognitive skill for two species: rhesus macaques and chimpanzees. In the first two experiments, using both a cross-sectional and a longitudinal design, we exposed individuals of different ages to a human looking in a specified direction. Rhesus infants first began reliably to follow the direction of this gaze at the end of the early infancy period, at about 5.5 months of age. Chimpanzees did not reliably follow human gaze until 3-4 years; this corresponds to the latter part of the late infancy period for this species. In the third experiment we exposed individuals of the same two species to a human repeatedly looking to the same location (with no special object at that location) to see if subjects would learn to ignore the looks. Only adults of the two species diminished their gaze-following behaviour over trials. This suggests that in the period between infancy and adulthood individuals of both species come to integrate their gaze-following skills with their more general social-cognitive knowledge about other animate beings and their behaviour, and so become able to deploy their gaze-following skills in a more flexible manner.
Reflexive social attention in monkeys and humans
2003
For humans, social cues often guide the focus of attention. Although many nonhuman primates, like humans, live in large, complex social groups, the extent to which human and nonhuman primates share fundamental mechanisms of social attention remains unexplored. Here, we show that, when viewing a rhesus macaque looking in a particular direction, both rhesus macaques and humans reflexively and covertly orient their attention in the same direction.
Is there a 'social brain'? Lessons from eye-gaze following, joint attention, and autism
The aim of this volume is to explore what it means to understand other minds. Drawing on philosophical, developmental, and psychological perspectives, the chapters in this book address a myriad of issues including how an understanding of minds develops, its significance for social interaction, and its relation to other social and cognitive achievements. Our chapter brings yet another perspective to bear on these issues. Taking a neuroscientific approach, our discussion centers on how understanding other minds -a central aspect of social-information processing -is represented in the brain.
Specificity of gaze-following in young chimpanzees
British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 1997
The development of gaze-following (or joint visual attention) allows human infants to orient to the same object or event to which another person is looking. The development of the ability undergoes elaborations between 6 and 18 months, with older infants displaying the ability to ( a ) track gaze in response to eye movement alone, (b) look into space outside of their immediate visual field, and (c) precisely localize the exact object at which another is looking. Chimpanzees also exhibit gazefollowing, but certain aspects of the specificity of this ability remain unclear. Seven pre-adolescent chimpanzees were used to replicate and extend a previous demonstration of gaze-following and to test the hypothesis that chimpanzees (like 18-month-old human infants) are capable of determining the specific location in space behind them into which another looks. The results strongly support the hypothesis, and suggest extensive commonality in the behavioural manifestations of gaze-following in the two species. Whether chimpanzees develop a parallel understanding of the mental state of attention behind gaze remains less clear.
Journal of Human Evolution, 52 (3): 314 - 320 , 2007
As compared with other primates, humans have especially visible eyes (e.g., white sclera). One hypothesis is that this feature of human eyes evolved to make it easier for conspecifics to follow an individual's gaze direction in close-range joint attentional and communicative interactions, which would seem to imply especially cooperative (mututalistic) conspecifics. In the current study, we tested one aspect of this cooperative eye hypothesis by comparing the gaze following behavior of great apes to that of human infants. A human experimenter ''looked'' to the ceiling either with his eyes only, head only (eyes closed), both head and eyes, or neither. Great apes followed gaze to the ceiling based mainly on the human's head direction (although eye direction played some role as well). In contrast, human infants relied almost exclusively on eye direction in these same situations. These results demonstrate that humans are especially reliant on eyes in gaze following situations, and thus, suggest that eyes evolved a new social function in human evolution, most likely to support cooperative (mututalistic) social interactions.
An analysis of gaze following to a hidden location in long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis)
Behaviour, 2012
Gaze following, the ability to track the direction of another's gaze, is thought to be an important component of human and animal social cognition. Several animal species attend to the gaze direction of others, but in Old World monkeys it remains unclear whether this behaviour is based on a simple co-orientation mechanism or on a more sophisticated perception of the other's visual behaviour. The capacity to follow another's gaze to a location hidden behind a physical obstacle has been argued to indicate refined skills in determining the exact direction of the other's gaze ('geometrical gaze following') and a representation of space outside one's own visual field. Human infants, great apes, new world monkeys, wolves (Canis lupus) and ravens (Corvus corax) have been shown to have this capacity. We investigated whether long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis), an Old World monkey, follow conspecific gaze, indicated by head direction and visual orientation, to a hidden location. When a conspecific demonstrator gazed at a mirror hidden behind a barrier, subjects relocated to a position where they could see the mirror location and showed a trend, not statistically significant, to direct more focussed looks behind the barrier than in a situation where there was no conspicuous gaze cue by the demonstrator. The strength of this reaction was greatest in those individuals that looked most frequently at the demonstrator. Thus, long-tailed macaques may follow gaze to a hidden location, suggesting that they possess geometrical gaze following and represent space outside their own visual field. In addition, this capacity may be widespread across the animal kingdom.
Previous experimental studies indicate that gaze-following is a reliable indicator of advanced cognitive capacity in social primates. Group-living primates, in particular, must navigate complex social relationships among group members and other conspecifics, and individuals thus require higher-level social-cognitive skills. The purpose of this research was to evaluate species-specific variation in the cognitive abilities of a unique population of semi-free-ranging apes composed of 15 orangutans and 30 chimpanzees housed at the Center for Great Apes in Wauchula, Florida, assess the degree to which individuals in these populations visually communicate with conspecifics via gaze-following, as well as investigate their capacity for joint visual attention. This research involved three separate observational studies, the goals of which were: to determine the capacity of subjects to follow the gaze of a human social partner; to assess individual frequencies of social monitoring as a function of age, sex, and species; and to investigate the ability of subjects to engage in joint attention with a human social partner toward functional objects (i.e. manipulative toys/possible tools) versus non-functional objects. Results of ANOVA and t-tests provided strong evidence for all three abilities and demonstrated that variation in frequencies of these behaviors between and within species was a consequence of the effects of sex and age. The significance of this research resides in the new insights that may be gained into the phylogenetic cognitive substrates underpinning the evolution of cognition and visual communication in the human lineage via our closest relatives, the great apes.
Facial expressions modulate the ontogenetic trajectory of gaze-following among monkeys
Developmental Science, 2010
Gaze-following, the tendency to direct one's attention to locations looked at by others, is a crucial aspect of social cognition in human and nonhuman primates. Whereas the development of gaze-following has been intensely studied in human infants, its early ontogeny in nonhuman primates has received little attention. Combining longitudinal and cross-sectional observational data from Barbary macaques at 'La ForÞt des Singes', we show here that gaze-following among conspecifics develops within the first year of life with a rapid increase between 5 and 6 months, reaching adult levels at 1 year. Sex, rank, and relatedness of the animal whose gaze the subject followed did not affect gaze-following rates. Interestingly, however, the behavior was enhanced in all age classes if a gaze-cue was accompanied by a facial expression. Furthermore, the effect of facial expressions had a modulatory influence on the ontogenetic trajectory of gaze-following, suggesting that it is of functional significance in the development of the behavior. Follow-up analyses revealed that one specific facial expression that is given in response to social interactions between third parties was particularly efficient in eliciting gaze-following responses, indicating the importance of cues that are able to guide the acquisition of social information. Taken together, these results suggest that the development and the operation of gaze-following are tuned to the social and physical characteristics of a species' environment.