Greg Detre
Monday, 27 November, 2000
Zoology, Lecture theatre B
Josep Call, Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig
social interaction is more than just responding to social cues
chimps (+ other animals?) develop behavioural rules � this is more than just social S-R, and allows flexible + appropriate behaviour in novel situations = social cognition
penis-offer and poke-at videos
Tomasello et al 1994, 1997 � visual gestures done mostly when others are looking, less so for auditory, and tactile gestures are done as often as not when others are looking
gaze-following
into distant space
around barriers
cues or rules?
prevent behavioural cues
prevent contextual cues
novel situtations and na� individuals
Occluder test (Hare et al., 2000)
2 chimps, both behind doors. when the doors are partially open, they can see into the room. there is a barrier occluding the dominant chimp�s view of the banana piece, but he can see the 2nd piece on the other side of the room, while the subordinate chimp can see both.
in hidden-visible condition, the subordinant with privileged knowledge of the situation goes for the hidden one more often
the dominant may be hinting where it is going by where it is looking � NO
the subordinate may be readin where the dominant is going � NO
the subordinate prefers rewards in front of the barrier � NO
Informed/uninformed/misinformed test
move the food to behind a barrier after being placed behind a first barrier
dominant sees food placement baiting sometimes, at choice: barrier vs barrier
subordinate sees food placement baiting, at choice � food vs empty
What the studies show
Behavioural abstraction � cues and learning alone are not enough, need a notion of seeing
Analogous to physical cognition � oddity + analogical reasoning
Intervening Variable (Whiten, 1996)
What the studies do not show
do they have subjective experiences?
do they have access to the rules, whether they understand the rules that govern their behaviour or not?
understanding of mental states? knowledge/ignorance, false belief?
Parallels with children?
rabbit hides carrot under red bucket, rabbit goes away, hedgehog moves the carrot to the blue box, when the rabbit comes back, where will it look for the carrot? children >4 correctly say that the rabbit will look under the red bucket (Baron-Cohen, 1985)
Tschudin et al. in prep, Dunbar in prep.
baiter hides the fish with the dolphin watches
the communicator leaves, and the baiter switches
the communicator returns, and points (wrongly)
the dolphin decides which box it wants (i.e. which direction its orientated towards)
������ false belief � dolphins did well
cue control � not well at all
you used female chimps in the occluder tests � what if you used males?
males + females together, the males would ignore the banana
the experiment might work if you used 2 males and a female as bait
have you swapped the subordinate-dominant chimps?
what about using the dolphins to communicate