Communicative Cues Among and Between Human and Non-human Primates: Attending to Specificity in Triadic Gestural Interactions

Abstract

Humans have a sophisticated understanding of other individuals’ mental states. But differences between humans and others species are already apparent when focusing on more basic social cognitive capacities. This chapter focuses on a very basic social cognitive skill: gaze following. A rich set of data supports the hypothesis that the ability to interpret others’ gaze shift as an indicator that others see things in their environment seems to be widespread among primates (and other species). However, this is in contrast to another set of data that shows that non-human primates, unlike humans, seem to have difficulties interpreting others’ gaze shift as indicators that they communicate about things in the environment. This chapter argues that non-human primates (and probably other species) may lack certain cognitive and motivational components, which help to identify the relevance and specificity of a triadic gestural communicative interaction.