Communication about absent entities in great apes and human infants

Cognition
Manuel BohnMichael Tomasello

Abstract

There is currently debate about the extent to which non-linguistic beings such as human infants and great apes are capable of absent reference. In a series of experiments we investigated the flexibility and specificity of great apes' (N=36) and 12month-old infants' (N=40) requests for absent entities. Subjects had the choice between requesting visible objects directly and using the former location of a depleted option to request more of these now-absent entities. Importantly, we systematically varied the quality of the present and absent options. We found that great apes as well as human infants flexibly adjusted their requests for absent entities to these contextual variations and only requested absent entities when the visible option was of lower quality than the absent option. These results suggest that the most basic cognitive capacities for absent reference do not depend on language and are shared by humans and their closest living relatives.

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Citations

Feb 23, 2018·Animal Cognition·Michael Tomasello, Josep Call
Aug 6, 2017·Animal Cognition·David A LeavensWilliam D Hopkins
Aug 22, 2017·Frontiers in Psychology·Katharina J RohlfingCarina Lüke
Nov 19, 2019·Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences·Miriam A Novack, Sandra Waxman
Nov 18, 2018·Science Advances·Adriano R Lameira, Josep Call
Jul 1, 2020·Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences·Claudio Tennie, Carel P van Schaik
Jan 25, 2020·Scientific Reports·Tibor TauzinJosep Call
May 4, 2021·Cognition·Barbara PomiechowskaTeodora Gliga
Aug 14, 2021·Infant Behavior & Development·Elena Luchkina, Sandra Waxman

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