Browsing by Author "Call, Josep"

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
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    A test of the submentalizing hypothesis: Apes' performance in a false belief task inanimate control.
    (Commun Integr Biol, 2017) Krupenye, Christopher; Kano, Fumihiro; Hirata, Satoshi; Call, Josep; Tomasello, Michael
    Much debate concerns whether any nonhuman animals share with humans the ability to infer others' mental states, such as desires and beliefs. In a recent eye-tracking false-belief task, we showed that great apes correctly anticipated that a human actor would search for a goal object where he had last seen it, even though the apes themselves knew that it was no longer there. In response, Heyes proposed that apes' looking behavior was guided not by social cognitive mechanisms but rather domain-general cueing effects, and suggested the use of inanimate controls to test this alternative submentalizing hypothesis. In the present study, we implemented the suggested inanimate control of our previous false-belief task. Apes attended well to key events but showed markedly fewer anticipatory looks and no significant tendency to look to the correct location. We thus found no evidence that submentalizing was responsible for apes' anticipatory looks in our false-belief task.
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    Differences in the cognitive skills of bonobos and chimpanzees.
    (PLoS One, 2010-08-27) Herrmann, Esther; Hare, Brian; Call, Josep; Tomasello, Michael
    While bonobos and chimpanzees are both genetically and behaviorally very similar, they also differ in significant ways. Bonobos are more cautious and socially tolerant while chimpanzees are more dependent on extractive foraging, which requires tools. The similarities suggest the two species should be cognitively similar while the behavioral differences predict where the two species should differ cognitively. We compared both species on a wide range of cognitive problems testing their understanding of the physical and social world. Bonobos were more skilled at solving tasks related to theory of mind or an understanding of social causality, while chimpanzees were more skilled at tasks requiring the use of tools and an understanding of physical causality. These species differences support the role of ecological and socio-ecological pressures in shaping cognitive skills over relatively short periods of evolutionary time.
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    Great apes anticipate that other individuals will act according to false beliefs.
    (Science, 2016-10-07) Krupenye, Christopher; Kano, Fumihiro; Hirata, Satoshi; Call, Josep; Tomasello, Michael
    Humans operate with a "theory of mind" with which they are able to understand that others' actions are driven not by reality but by beliefs about reality, even when those beliefs are false. Although great apes share with humans many social-cognitive skills, they have repeatedly failed experimental tests of such false-belief understanding. We use an anticipatory looking test (originally developed for human infants) to show that three species of great apes reliably look in anticipation of an agent acting on a location where he falsely believes an object to be, even though the apes themselves know that the object is no longer there. Our results suggest that great apes also operate, at least on an implicit level, with an understanding of false beliefs.
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    Great apes distinguish true from false beliefs in an interactive helping task.
    (PLoS One, 2017) Buttelmann, David; Buttelmann, Frances; Carpenter, Malinda; Call, Josep; Tomasello, Michael
    Understanding the behavior of others in a wide variety of circumstances requires an understanding of their psychological states. Humans' nearest primate relatives, the great apes, understand many psychological states of others, for example, perceptions, goals, and desires. However, so far there is little evidence that they possess the key marker of advanced human social cognition: an understanding of false beliefs. Here we demonstrate that in a nonverbal (implicit) false-belief test which is passed by human 1-year-old infants, great apes as a group, including chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), bonobos (Pan paniscus), and orangutans (Pongo abelii), distinguish between true and false beliefs in their helping behavior. Great apes thus may possess at least some basic understanding that an agent's actions are based on her beliefs about reality. Hence, such understanding might not be the exclusive province of the human species.
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    How does cognition evolve? Phylogenetic comparative psychology.
    (Anim Cogn, 2012-03) MacLean, Evan L; Matthews, Luke J; Hare, Brian A; Nunn, Charles L; Anderson, Rindy C; Aureli, Filippo; Brannon, Elizabeth M; Call, Josep; Drea, Christine M; Emery, Nathan J; Haun, Daniel BM; Herrmann, Esther; Jacobs, Lucia F; Platt, Michael L; Rosati, Alexandra G; Sandel, Aaron A; Schroepfer, Kara K; Seed, Amanda M; Tan, Jingzhi; van Schaik, Carel P; Wobber, Victoria
    Now more than ever animal studies have the potential to test hypotheses regarding how cognition evolves. Comparative psychologists have developed new techniques to probe the cognitive mechanisms underlying animal behavior, and they have become increasingly skillful at adapting methodologies to test multiple species. Meanwhile, evolutionary biologists have generated quantitative approaches to investigate the phylogenetic distribution and function of phenotypic traits, including cognition. In particular, phylogenetic methods can quantitatively (1) test whether specific cognitive abilities are correlated with life history (e.g., lifespan), morphology (e.g., brain size), or socio-ecological variables (e.g., social system), (2) measure how strongly phylogenetic relatedness predicts the distribution of cognitive skills across species, and (3) estimate the ancestral state of a given cognitive trait using measures of cognitive performance from extant species. Phylogenetic methods can also be used to guide the selection of species comparisons that offer the strongest tests of a priori predictions of cognitive evolutionary hypotheses (i.e., phylogenetic targeting). Here, we explain how an integration of comparative psychology and evolutionary biology will answer a host of questions regarding the phylogenetic distribution and history of cognitive traits, as well as the evolutionary processes that drove their evolution.
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    Submentalizing Cannot Explain Belief-Based Action Anticipation in Apes.
    (Trends Cogn Sci, 2017-07-17) Kano, Fumihiro; Krupenye, Christopher; Hirata, Satoshi; Call, Josep; Tomasello, Michael
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    Thirty years of great ape gestures.
    (Anim Cogn, 2018-02-21) Tomasello, Michael; Call, Josep
    We and our colleagues have been doing studies of great ape gestural communication for more than 30 years. Here we attempt to spell out what we have learned. Some aspects of the process have been reliably established by multiple researchers, for example, its intentional structure and its sensitivity to the attentional state of the recipient. Other aspects are more controversial. We argue here that it is a mistake to assimilate great ape gestures to the species-typical displays of other mammals by claiming that they are fixed action patterns, as there are many differences, including the use of attention-getters. It is also a mistake, we argue, to assimilate great ape gestures to human gestures by claiming that they are used referentially and declaratively in a human-like manner, as apes' "pointing" gesture has many limitations and they do not gesture iconically. Great ape gestures constitute a unique form of primate communication with their own unique qualities.