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Thirty years of great ape gestures

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Tomasello_2018_AC_Thirtyyears_CC.pdf (621.1Kb)
Date
21/02/2018
Author
Tomasello, Michael
Call, Josep
Keywords
Apes
Communication
Gestures
BF Psychology
QH301 Biology
QL Zoology
Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
T-NDAS
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Abstract
We and our colleagues have been doing studies of great ape gestural communication for more than 30 years. Here we attempt to spell out what we have learned. Some aspects of the process have been reliably established by multiple researchers, for example, its intentional structure and its sensitivity to the attentional state of the recipient. Other aspects are more controversial. We argue here that it is a mistake to assimilate great ape gestures to the species-typical displays of other mammals by claiming that they are fixed action patterns, as there are many differences, including the use of attention-getters. It is also a mistake, we argue, to assimilate great ape gestures to human gestures by claiming that they are used referentially and declaratively in a human-like manner, as apes’ “pointing” gesture has many limitations and they do not gesture iconically. Great ape gestures constitute a unique form of primate communication with their own unique qualities.
Citation
Tomasello , M & Call , J 2018 , ' Thirty years of great ape gestures ' , Animal Cognition , vol. First Online . https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-018-1167-1
Publication
Animal Cognition
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-018-1167-1
ISSN
1435-9448
Type
Journal article
Rights
© The Author(s) 2018. Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
Description
Open access funding provided by Max Planck Society.
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  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/12830

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