TY - JOUR
T1 - Interpretation of human pointing by African elephants
T2 - generalisation and rationality
AU - Smet, Ann Farai
AU - Byrne, Richard William
N1 - 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.
PY - 2014/11
Y1 - 2014/11
N2 - 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signal is sustained until the time of choice: elephants followed human pointing even when the pointing gesture was withdrawn before they had responded to it.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.
AB - 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signal is sustained until the time of choice: elephants followed human pointing even when the pointing gesture was withdrawn before they had responded to it.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.
KW - Pointing
KW - Social cues
KW - Object-choice
KW - Rationality
KW - Communication
UR - http://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1007%2Fs10071-014-0772-x/MediaObjects/10071_2014_772_MOESM1_ESM.docx
UR - http://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1007%2Fs10071-014-0772-x/MediaObjects/10071_2014_772_MOESM2_ESM.mpg
UR - http://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1007%2Fs10071-014-0772-x/MediaObjects/10071_2014_772_MOESM3_ESM.mpg
UR - http://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1007%2Fs10071-014-0772-x/MediaObjects/10071_2014_772_MOESM4_ESM.mpg
UR - http://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1007%2Fs10071-014-0772-x/MediaObjects/10071_2014_772_MOESM5_ESM.mpg
U2 - 10.1007/s10071-014-0772-x
DO - 10.1007/s10071-014-0772-x
M3 - Article
SN - 1435-9448
VL - 17
JO - Animal Cognition
JF - Animal Cognition
IS - 6
ER -