Eye tracking uncovered great apes' ability to anticipate that other individuals will act according to false beliefs

Fumihiro Kano, Christopher Krupenye, Satoshi Hirata, Josep Call

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

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 3 major differences in our task compared with the previous ones. First, we monitored apes' eye movements, and specifically their anticipatory looks, 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.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article numbere1299836
JournalCommunicative and Integrative Biology
Volume10
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 4 2017
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • anticipatory look
  • eye-tracking
  • false belief
  • great ape
  • theory of Mind

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Agricultural and Biological Sciences

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