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Now you see me, now you don't: evidence that chimpanzees understand the role of the eyes in attention

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Abstract

Chimpanzees appear to understand something about the attentional states of others; in the present experiment, we investigated whether they understand that the attentional state of a human is based on eye gaze. In all, 116 adult chimpanzees were offered food by an experimenter who engaged in one of the four experimental manipulations: eyes closed, eyes open, hand over eyes, and hand over mouth. The communicative behavior of the chimpanzees was observed. More visible behaviors were produced when the experimenter's eyes were visible than when the experimenter's eyes were not visible. More vocalizations were produced when the experimenter's eyes were closed than when they were open, but there were no differences in other attention getting behaviors. There was no effect of age or rearing history. The results suggest that chimpanzees use the presence of the eyes as a cue that their visual gestures will be effective.

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Notes

  1. The focal chimpanzee did not typically direct any communicative behaviors toward E2, because E1 clearly had the food. On the rare occasion that a communicative behavior was directed toward E2, it was not recorded.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by NIH grants RR-00165, NS-29574, NS-36605, NS-42867, and HD-38051. We thank Sara Shonka for her help with data collection.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1202 W. Johnson Street, Madison, WI, 53706, USA

    Autumn B. Hostetter

  2. Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Office of Public Affairs, 954 Gatewood Road, Atlanta, GA, 30329, USA

    Jamie L. Russell, Hani Freeman & William D. Hopkins

  3. Department of Psychology, Berry College, Mount Berry, GA, USA

    William D. Hopkins

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  1. Autumn B. Hostetter
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  2. Jamie L. Russell
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  3. Hani Freeman
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  4. William D. Hopkins
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Correspondence to Autumn B. Hostetter.

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Hostetter, A.B., Russell, J.L., Freeman, H. et al. Now you see me, now you don't: evidence that chimpanzees understand the role of the eyes in attention. Anim Cogn 10, 55–62 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-006-0031-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-006-0031-x

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