Spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi) and capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) follow gaze around barriers: Evidence for perspective taking?

Abstract

Gaze following is an adaptive skill that might have been selected in social species, such as many nonhuman primates, to obtain information about food location, predators, and social interactions. The authors investigated the ability of spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi) and capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) to follow the gaze of a human around barriers and the presence of "looking back" behavior. In the 1st experiment, a human looked to a target location inside the testing room, whereas in the 2nd experiment, the human looked behind an opaque barrier placed outside the testing room. The authors compared the frequency of looking at the target location with the corresponding baseline looking frequencies. Both species (a) showed evidence of spontaneous gaze following in the 1st experiment and (b) engaged in gaze following behind the barrier in the 2nd experiment. In contrast, neither species performed "looking back" responses. The authors conclude that both monkey species showed some indication of perspective-taking abilities, although the absence of "looking back" behavior suggests a potential difference from the abilities shown by the great apes.

Brown (Eulemur fulvus) and Ring-Tailed Lemurs (Lemur catta) Use Human Head Orientation as a Cue to Gaze Direction in a Food Choice Task

“…Whilst human gaze following has been demonstrated in apes and some monkeys [Itakura, 1996;Povinelli and Eddy, 1996a;Anderson and Mitchell, 1999;Anderson et al, 2005;Amici et al, 2009], relatively few experiments have investigated gaze processing in lemurs, or indeed any aspects of lemur social cognition [Tomasello and Call, 1997]. This is somewhat surprising, given what such experiments might tell us about the social cognitive abilities of a common ancestor of these taxa.…”

New perspectives in gaze sensitivity research

“…and Symphalangus syndactylus) (Liebal & Kaminski, 2012) fail the geometric gaze task. In contrast, all of the great apes (Bräuer et al, 2005), spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi) and capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) (Amici, Aureli, Visalberghi, & Call, 2009), dogs (Canus lupus) (Bräuer et al, 2004), and ravens (Bugnyar et al, 2004) gaze behind barriers, suggesting that they appreciate others' fields of view, and thus where their attention is directed. An alternative interpretation is that individuals may learn that repositioning themselves is associated with spotting something of interest on the other side of a visual obstruction.…”

Poor receptive joint attention skills are associated with atypical gray matter asymmetry in the posterior superior temporal gyrus of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

“…Studies in a number of laboratories have shown that Old and New World monkeys and apes will not only follow gaze (Brauer et al, 2005; Rosati and Hare, 2009), but can follow gaze around barriers, and follow manual pointing gestures to specific locations (Tomasello et al, 1999; Brauer et al, 2005; Amici et al, 2009). As with human infants (Moll and Tomasello, 2004), there are considerable individual differences in gaze following and RJA performance in nonhuman primates.…”