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Interpretation of human pointing by African elephants : generalisation and rationality

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Byrne_2014_AC_Interpretation_AM.pdf (431.5Kb)
Date
11/2014
Author
Smet, Ann Farai
Byrne, Richard William
Keywords
Pointing
Social cues
Object-choice
Rationality
Communication
BF Psychology
QH301 Biology
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Abstract
Factors influencing the abilities of different animals to use cooperative social cues from humans are still unclear, in spite of long-standing interest in the topic. One of the few species that have been found successful at using human pointing is the African elephant (Loxodonta africana); despite few opportunities for learning about pointing, elephants follow a pointing gesture in an object-choice task, even when the pointing signal and experimenter’s body position are in conflict, and when the gesture itself is visually subtle. Here, we show that the success of captive African elephants at using human pointing is not restricted to situations where the pointing signal is sustained until the time of choice: elephants followed human pointing even when the pointing gesture was withdrawn before they had responded to it. Furthermore, elephants rapidly generalised their response to a type of social cue they were unlikely to have seen before: pointing with the foot. However, unlike young children, they showed no sign of evaluating the ‘rationality’ of this novel pointing gesture according to its visual context: that is, whether the experimenter’s hands were occupied or not.
Citation
Smet , A F & Byrne , R W 2014 , ' Interpretation of human pointing by African elephants : generalisation and rationality ' , Animal Cognition , vol. 17 , no. 6 . https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-014-0772-x
Publication
Animal Cognition
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-014-0772-x
ISSN
1435-9448
Type
Journal article
Rights
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014. This work is made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the author created, accepted version manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10071-014-0772-x
Description
This research was carried out with funding from a departmental studentship from the School of Psychology and Neuroscience of the University of St Andrews, awarded to AFS.
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  • University of St Andrews Research
URL
http://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1007%2Fs10071-014-0772-x/MediaObjects/10071_2014_772_MOESM1_ESM.docx
http://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1007%2Fs10071-014-0772-x/MediaObjects/10071_2014_772_MOESM2_ESM.mpg
http://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1007%2Fs10071-014-0772-x/MediaObjects/10071_2014_772_MOESM3_ESM.mpg
http://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1007%2Fs10071-014-0772-x/MediaObjects/10071_2014_772_MOESM4_ESM.mpg
http://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1007%2Fs10071-014-0772-x/MediaObjects/10071_2014_772_MOESM5_ESM.mpg
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/6937

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