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What Young Chimpanzees Know about Seeing
Does a young chimpanzee's gaze subjectively link it to the outside world? Is seeing "about" something to this species? This volume reports the results of fifteen studies conducted with chimpanzees and preschool children. The findings provide little evidence that young chimpanzees understand seeing as a mental event. Even though young chimps spontaneously attend to and follow the visual gaze of others, they simultaneously appear oblivious to the attentional significance of that gaze. This interpretation is consistent with three different chimpanzees may experience a delay in psychological development; alternatively, they may possess a different theory of attention, connected subjectively through other behavioral indicators; or the subjective understanding of visual perception may only be present in humans.
200 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1996
4 people want to read
About the author
Daniel J. Povinelli
7 books2 followersHis primary interests are in characterizing the evolution of higher-order cognitive functions in the great ape/human clade (humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans). Primarily, our research programs include comparisons of the psychological development of human children and captive chimpanzees.
Their long-term projects have focused on three areas: (1) whether chimpanzees and other nonhuman primates reason about unobservable mental states of others (such as perceptions, desires, and beliefs). (2) whether these species reason about unobservable aspects of physical interactions (such as gravity, force, mass, physical connection, strength. etc.), and (3) the nature of the self-concept in the great apes. Each of these programs involves systematic comparisons with human children between the ages of 18 months and about 5 years. Much of their current research has attempted to test our theories which relate the evidence of an elaborated system of kinesthetic self-representation in the great apes (as expressed through their capacity for mirror self-recognition, elaborated patterns of tool-making and use, and more robust forms of imitation), to ecological aspects of the ancestor of this taxonomic group. Based upon morphological evidence, orangutans appear to be the closest approximation of the common ancestor, and thus have served as a focal point for testing certain aspects of these theories.
Graduate students in recent years have primarily worked with their population of captive chimpanzees on projects relating to their understanding of the underlying principles of how simple tools work, their ability to reason about what others can and cannot see, their ability to related their own sensory experiences when interacting with objects to abstract physical properties of those objects (such as weight), and their ability to pre-plan sequential motor actions. Long-term financial support for their laboratories provides resources for student projects.
Their long-term projects have focused on three areas: (1) whether chimpanzees and other nonhuman primates reason about unobservable mental states of others (such as perceptions, desires, and beliefs). (2) whether these species reason about unobservable aspects of physical interactions (such as gravity, force, mass, physical connection, strength. etc.), and (3) the nature of the self-concept in the great apes. Each of these programs involves systematic comparisons with human children between the ages of 18 months and about 5 years. Much of their current research has attempted to test our theories which relate the evidence of an elaborated system of kinesthetic self-representation in the great apes (as expressed through their capacity for mirror self-recognition, elaborated patterns of tool-making and use, and more robust forms of imitation), to ecological aspects of the ancestor of this taxonomic group. Based upon morphological evidence, orangutans appear to be the closest approximation of the common ancestor, and thus have served as a focal point for testing certain aspects of these theories.
Graduate students in recent years have primarily worked with their population of captive chimpanzees on projects relating to their understanding of the underlying principles of how simple tools work, their ability to reason about what others can and cannot see, their ability to related their own sensory experiences when interacting with objects to abstract physical properties of those objects (such as weight), and their ability to pre-plan sequential motor actions. Long-term financial support for their laboratories provides resources for student projects.
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