Eye tracking uncovered great apes' ability to anticipate that other individuals will act according to false beliefs
Abstract
Using a novel eye-tracking test, we recently showed that great apes anticipate that other individuals will act according to false beliefs. This finding suggests that, like humans, great apes understand others' false beliefs, at least in an implicit way. One key question raised by our study is why apes have passed our tests but not previous ones. In this article, we consider this question by detailing the development of our task. We considered three major differences in our task compared to the previous ones. First, we monitored apes' eye movements, and specifically their anticipatory looks, in order to measure their predictions about how agents will behave. Second, we adapted our design from an anticipatory-looking false belief test originally developed for human infants. Third, we developed novel test scenarios that were specifically designed to capture the attention of our ape participants. We then discuss how each difference may help explain differences in performance on our task and previous ones, and finally propose some directions for future studies.
Citation
Kano , F , Krupenye , C , Hirata , S & Call , J 2017 , ' Eye tracking uncovered great apes' ability to anticipate that other individuals will act according to false beliefs ' , Communicative and Integrative Biology , vol. 10 , no. 2 , e1299836 . https://doi.org/10.1080/19420889.2017.1299836
Publication
Communicative and Integrative Biology
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1942-0889Type
Journal article
Description
Financial support came from Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (K-CONNEX to FK), Japan Society for Promotion of Science (KAKENHI 26885040, 16K21108 to FK), National Science Foundation (DGE-1106401 to CK), JSPS (KAKENHI 26245069, 24000001 to SH), and European Research Council (Synergy grant 609819 SOMICS to JC)Collections
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