Records |
Author |
Miklósi, Á.; Soproni, K. |
Title |
A comparative analysis of animals' understanding of the human pointing gesture |
Type |
Journal Article |
Year |
2006 |
Publication |
Animal cognition |
Abbreviated Journal |
Anim. Cogn. |
Volume |
9 |
Issue |
2 |
Pages |
81-93 |
Keywords |
*Animal Communication; Animals; *Behavior, Animal; Child; Child, Preschool; Dogs; Fixation, Ocular; *Gestures; Hand; Humans; *Nonverbal Communication; Pinnipedia; Primates; Problem Solving; *Recognition (Psychology); Species Specificity |
Abstract |
We review studies demonstrating the ability of some animals to understand the human pointing gesture. We present a 3-step analysis of the topic. (1) We compare and evaluate current experimental methods (2) We compare available experimental results on performance of different species and investigate the interaction of species differences and other independent variables (3) We evaluate how our present understanding of pointing comprehension answers questions about function, evolution and mechanisms. Recently, a number of different hypotheses have been put forward to account for the presence of this ability in some species and for the lack of such comprehension in others. In our view, there is no convincing evidence for the assumption that the competitive lifestyles of apes would inhibit the utilization of this human gesture. Similarly, domestication as a special evolutionary factor in the case of some species falls short in explaining high levels of pointing comprehension in some non-domestic species. We also disagree with the simplistic view of describing the phenomenon as a simple form of conditioning. We suggest that a more systematic comparative research is needed to understand the emerging communicative representational abilities in animals that provide the background for comprehending the human pointing gesture. |
Address |
Department of Ethology, Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest, Pazmany P 1/c, H-1117, Budapest, Hungary. miklosa@ludens.elte.hu |
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1435-9448 |
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PMID:16235075 |
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refbase @ user @ |
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463 |
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Author |
Koba, R.; Izumi, A. |
Title |
Sex categorization of conspecific pictures in Japanese monkeys (Macaca fuscata) |
Type |
Journal Article |
Year |
2006 |
Publication |
Animal Cognition |
Abbreviated Journal |
Anim. Cogn. |
Volume |
9 |
Issue |
3 |
Pages |
183-191 |
Keywords |
Animals; Conditioning, Operant; *Discrimination (Psychology); Female; *Generalization (Psychology); Macaca/*psychology; Male; *Pattern Recognition, Visual; Photography; Recognition (Psychology); *Sex Characteristics |
Abstract |
We investigated whether monkeys discriminate the sex of individuals from their pictures. Whole-body pictures of adult and nonadult monkeys were used as stimuli. Two male Japanese monkeys were trained for a two-choice sex categorization task in which each of two choice pictures were assigned to male and female, respectively. Following the training, the monkeys were presented with novel monkey pictures, and whether they had acquired the categorization task was tested. The results suggested that while monkeys discriminate between the pictures of adult males and females, discrimination of nonadult pictures was difficult. Partial presentations of the pictures showed that conspicuous and sexually characteristic parts (i.e., underbellies including male scrotums or breasts including female nipples) played an important role in the sex categorization. |
Address |
Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University, Kanrin 41, Inuyama, 484-8506, Japan |
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1435-9448 |
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PMID:16612631 |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
Serial |
2470 |
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Author |
Goto, K.; Lea, S.E.G.; Dittrich, W.H. |
Title |
Discrimination of intentional and random motion paths by pigeons |
Type |
Journal Article |
Year |
2002 |
Publication |
Animal Cognition |
Abbreviated Journal |
Anim. Cogn. |
Volume |
5 |
Issue |
3 |
Pages |
119-127 |
Keywords |
Animals; *Columbidae; *Discrimination Learning; *Motion Perception; Recognition (Psychology) |
Abstract |
Twelve pigeons ( Columba livia) were trained on a go/no-go schedule to discriminate between two kinds of movement patterns of dots, which to human observers appear to be “intentional” and “non-intentional” movements. In experiment 1, the intentional motion stimulus contained one dot (a “wolf”) that moved systematically towards another dot as though stalking it, and three distractors (“sheep”). The non-intentional motion stimulus consisted of four distractors but no stalker. Birds showed some improvement of discrimination as the sessions progressed, but high levels of discrimination were not reached. In experiment 2, the same birds were tested with different stimuli. The same parameters were used but the number of intentionally moving dots in the intentional motion stimulus was altered, so that three wolves stalked one sheep. Despite the enhanced difference of movement patterns, the birds did not show any further improvement in discrimination. However, birds for which the non-intentional stimulus was associated with reward showed a decline in discrimination. These results indicated that pigeons can discriminate between stimuli that do and do not contain an element that human observer see as moving intentionally. However, as no feature-positive effect was found in experiment 1, it is assumed that pigeons did not perceive or discriminate these stimuli on the basis that the intentional stimuli contained a feature that the non-intentional stimuli lacked, though the convergence seen in experiment 2 may have been an effective feature for the pigeons. Pigeons seem to be able to recognise some form of multiple simultaneously goal-directed motions, compared to random motions, as a distinctive feature, but do not seem to use simple “intentional” motion paths of two geometrical figures, embedded in random motions, as a feature whose presence or absence differentiates motion displays. |
Address |
School of Psychology, University of Exeter, Washington Singer Laboratories, Exeter EX4 4QG, UK. K.Goto@exeter.ac.uk |
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1435-9448 |
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PMID:12357284 |
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no |
Call Number |
Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
Serial |
2601 |
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Author |
Nielsen, M.; Collier-Baker, E.; Davis, J.M.; Suddendorf, T. |
Title |
Imitation recognition in a captive chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) |
Type |
Journal Article |
Year |
2005 |
Publication |
Animal Cognition |
Abbreviated Journal |
Anim. Cogn. |
Volume |
8 |
Issue |
1 |
Pages |
31-36 |
Keywords |
Animals; *Awareness; Humans; *Imitative Behavior; Male; Motor Activity; *Movement; Pan troglodytes/*psychology; *Recognition (Psychology) |
Abstract |
This study investigated the ability of a captive chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) to recognise when he is being imitated. In the experimental condition of test 1a, an experimenter imitated the postures and behaviours of the chimpanzee as they were being displayed. In three control conditions the same experimenter exhibited (1) actions that were contingent on, but different from, the actions of the chimpanzee, (2) actions that were not contingent on, and different from, the actions of the chimpanzee, or (3) no action at all. The chimpanzee showed more “testing” sequences (i.e., systematically varying his actions while oriented to the imitating experimenter) and more repetitive behaviour when he was being imitated, than when he was not. This finding was replicated 4 months later in test 1b. When the experimenter repeated the same actions she displayed in the experimental condition of test 1a back to the chimpanzee in test 2, these actions now did not elicit those same testing sequences or repetitive behaviours. However, a live imitation condition did. Together these results provide the first evidence of imitation recognition in a nonhuman animal. |
Address |
Early Cognitive Development Unit, School of Psychology, University of Queensland, QLD, Brisbane, 4072, Australia. nielsen@psy.uq.edu.au |
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1435-9448 |
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PMID:15322942 |
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no |
Call Number |
Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
Serial |
2515 |
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Author |
Watanabe, S.; Troje, N.F. |
Title |
Towards a “virtual pigeon”: a new technique for investigating avian social perception |
Type |
Journal Article |
Year |
2006 |
Publication |
Animal Cognition |
Abbreviated Journal |
Anim. Cogn. |
Volume |
9 |
Issue |
4 |
Pages |
271-279 |
Keywords |
Animals; Behavioral Research/instrumentation/methods; Columbidae/*physiology; Computer Graphics; *Computer Simulation; Discrimination Learning/*physiology; Generalization (Psychology)/*physiology; Pattern Recognition, Visual/*physiology; Perceptual Masking/physiology; Rats; Recognition (Psychology)/physiology; *Social Behavior; User-Computer Interface |
Abstract |
The purpose of the present study is to examine the applicability of a computer-generated, virtual animal to study animal cognition. Pigeons were trained to discriminate between movies of a real pigeon and a rat. Then, they were tested with movies of the computer-generated (CG) pigeon. Subjects showed generalization to the CG pigeon, however, they also responded to modified versions in which the CG pigeon was showing impossible movement, namely hopping and walking without its head bobbing. Hence, the pigeons did not attend to these particular details of the display. When they were trained to discriminate between the normal and the modified version of the CG pigeon, they were able to learn the discrimination. The results of an additional partial occlusion test suggest that the subjects used head movement as a cue for the usual vs. unusual CG pigeon discrimination. |
Address |
Department of Psychology, Keio University, Mita 2-15-45, Minato-ku, Tokyo, 108, Japan. swat@flet.keio.ac.jp |
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1435-9448 |
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PMID:17024508 |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
Serial |
2437 |
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Author |
Vokey, J.R.; Rendall, D.; Tangen, J.M.; Parr, L.A.; de Waal, F.B.M. |
Title |
Visual kin recognition and family resemblance in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) |
Type |
Journal Article |
Year |
2004 |
Publication |
Journal of comparative psychology (Washington, D.C. : 1983) |
Abbreviated Journal |
J Comp Psychol |
Volume |
118 |
Issue |
2 |
Pages |
194-199 |
Keywords |
Animals; Female; Male; Pan troglodytes; Random Allocation; *Recognition (Psychology); *Visual Perception |
Abstract |
The male-offspring biased visual kin recognition in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) reported by L. A. Parr and F. B. M. de Waal (1999) was replicated with human (Homo sapiens) participants and a principal components analysis (PCA) of pixel maps of the chimpanzee face photos. With the same original materials and methods, both humans and the PCA produced the same asymmetry in kin recognition as found with the chimpanzees. The PCA suggested that the asymmetry was a function of differences in the distribution of global characteristics associated with the framing of the faces in the son and daughter test sets. Eliminating potential framing biases, either by cropping the photos tightly to the faces or by rebalancing the recognition foils, eliminated the asymmetry but not human participants' ability to recognize chimpanzee kin. |
Address |
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. vokey@uleth.ca |
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ISSN |
0735-7036 |
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PMID:15250806 |
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no |
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refbase @ user @ |
Serial |
171 |
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Author |
Parr, L.A. |
Title |
Perceptual biases for multimodal cues in chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) affect recognition |
Type |
Journal Article |
Year |
2004 |
Publication |
Animal Cognition |
Abbreviated Journal |
Anim. Cogn. |
Volume |
7 |
Issue |
3 |
Pages |
171-178 |
Keywords |
Acoustic Stimulation; *Animal Communication; Animals; Auditory Perception/physiology; Cues; Discrimination Learning/*physiology; Facial Expression; Female; Male; Pan troglodytes/*psychology; Perceptual Masking/*physiology; Photic Stimulation; Recognition (Psychology)/*physiology; Visual Perception/physiology; *Vocalization, Animal |
Abstract |
The ability of organisms to discriminate social signals, such as affective displays, using different sensory modalities is important for social communication. However, a major problem for understanding the evolution and integration of multimodal signals is determining how humans and animals attend to different sensory modalities, and these different modalities contribute to the perception and categorization of social signals. Using a matching-to-sample procedure, chimpanzees discriminated videos of conspecifics' facial expressions that contained only auditory or only visual cues by selecting one of two facial expression photographs that matched the expression category represented by the sample. Other videos were edited to contain incongruent sensory cues, i.e., visual features of one expression but auditory features of another. In these cases, subjects were free to select the expression that matched either the auditory or visual modality, whichever was more salient for that expression type. Results showed that chimpanzees were able to discriminate facial expressions using only auditory or visual cues, and when these modalities were mixed. However, in these latter trials, depending on the expression category, clear preferences for either the visual or auditory modality emerged. Pant-hoots and play faces were discriminated preferentially using the auditory modality, while screams were discriminated preferentially using the visual modality. Therefore, depending on the type of expressive display, the auditory and visual modalities were differentially salient in ways that appear consistent with the ethological importance of that display's social function. |
Address |
Division of Psychobiology, Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University, 954 Gatewood Road, GA 30329, Atlanta, USA. parr@rmy.emory.edu |
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1435-9448 |
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PMID:14997361 |
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no |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
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2544 |
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Author |
Gácsi, M.; Miklósi, Á.; Varga, O.; Topál, J.; Csányi, V. |
Title |
Are readers of our face readers of our minds? Dogs (Canis familiaris) show situation-dependent recognition of human's attention |
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Journal Article |
Year |
2004 |
Publication |
Animal Cognition |
Abbreviated Journal |
Anim. Cogn. |
Volume |
7 |
Issue |
3 |
Pages |
144-153 |
Keywords |
Animals; Association Learning; *Attention; Bonding, Human-Pet; Cognition; *Concept Formation; Cues; Dogs/*psychology; *Facial Expression; Female; Humans; Male; *Nonverbal Communication; *Recognition (Psychology); Social Behavior |
Abstract |
The ability of animals to use behavioral/facial cues in detection of human attention has been widely investigated. In this test series we studied the ability of dogs to recognize human attention in different experimental situations (ball-fetching game, fetching objects on command, begging from humans). The attentional state of the humans was varied along two variables: (1) facing versus not facing the dog; (2) visible versus non-visible eyes. In the first set of experiments (fetching) the owners were told to take up different body positions (facing or not facing the dog) and to either cover or not cover their eyes with a blindfold. In the second set of experiments (begging) dogs had to choose between two eating humans based on either the visibility of the eyes or direction of the face. Our results show that the efficiency of dogs to discriminate between “attentive” and “inattentive” humans depended on the context of the test, but they could rely on the orientation of the body, the orientation of the head and the visibility of the eyes. With the exception of the fetching-game situation, they brought the object to the front of the human (even if he/she turned his/her back towards the dog), and preferentially begged from the facing (or seeing) human. There were also indications that dogs were sensitive to the visibility of the eyes because they showed increased hesitative behavior when approaching a blindfolded owner, and they also preferred to beg from the person with visible eyes. We conclude that dogs are able to rely on the same set of human facial cues for detection of attention, which form the behavioral basis of understanding attention in humans. Showing the ability of recognizing human attention across different situations dogs proved to be more flexible than chimpanzees investigated in similar circumstances. |
Address |
Comparative Ethology Research Group, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Pazmany P. 1/c., 1117, Budapest, Hungary. gm.art@axelero.hu |
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1435-9448 |
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PMID:14669075 |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
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2547 |
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Author |
Aust, U.; Huber, L. |
Title |
Picture-object recognition in pigeons: evidence of representational insight in a visual categorization task using a complementary information procedure |
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Journal Article |
Year |
2006 |
Publication |
Journal of Experimental Psychology. Animal Behavior Processes |
Abbreviated Journal |
J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process |
Volume |
32 |
Issue |
2 |
Pages |
190-195 |
Keywords |
Animals; Classification; *Cognition; Columbidae; *Discrimination Learning; *Form Perception; *Generalization (Psychology); Humans; Perceptual Closure; Photic Stimulation; Photography; *Recognition (Psychology) |
Abstract |
Success in tasks requiring categorization of pictorial stimuli does not prove that a subject understands what the pictures stand for. The ability to achieve representational insight is by no means a trivial one because it exceeds mere detection of 2-D features present in both the pictorial images and their referents. So far, evidence for such an ability in nonhuman species is weak and inconclusive. Here, the authors report evidence of representational insight in pigeons. After being trained on pictures of incomplete human figures, the birds responded significantly more to pictures of the previously missing parts than to nonrepresentative stimuli, which demonstrates that they actually recognized the pictures' representational content. |
Address |
Department for Behavior, Neurobiology and Cognition, University of Vienna, Austria. ulrike.aust@univie.ac.at |
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0097-7403 |
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PMID:16634663 |
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no |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
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2759 |
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Author |
Anderson, J.R.; Kuroshima, H.; Kuwahata, H.; Fujita, K. |
Title |
Do squirrel monkeys (Saimiri sciureus) and capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) predict that looking leads to touching? |
Type |
Journal Article |
Year |
2004 |
Publication |
Animal Cognition |
Abbreviated Journal |
Anim. Cogn. |
Volume |
7 |
Issue |
3 |
Pages |
185-192 |
Keywords |
Animals; Association Learning; *Attention; Cebus/*psychology; Cognition; *Concept Formation; Cues; Fixation, Ocular; Humans; *Nonverbal Communication; Recognition (Psychology); Saimiri/*psychology; Social Behavior; Species Specificity |
Abstract |
Squirrel monkeys (Saimiri sciureus) and capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) were tested using an expectancy violation procedure to assess whether they use an actor's gaze direction, signaled by congruent head and eye orientation, to predict subsequent behavior. The monkeys visually habituated to a repeated sequence in which the actor (a familiar human or a puppet) looked at an object and then picked it up, but they did not react strongly when the actor looked at an object but then picked up another object. Capuchin monkeys' responses in the puppet condition were slightly more suggestive of expectancy. There was no differential responding to congruent versus incongruent look-touch sequences when familiarization trials were omitted. The weak findings contrast with a strongly positive result previously reported for tamarin monkeys. Additional evidence is required before concluding that behavior prediction based on gaze cues typifies primates; other approaches for studying how they process attention cues are indicated. |
Address |
Department of Psychology, University of Stirling, FK9 4LA, Stirling, Scotland. jra1@stir.ac.uk |
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1435-9448 |
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PMID:15022054 |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
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2540 |
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