REFERENTIAL GESTURES IN CHIMPANZEES IN THE WILD:PRECURSORS TO SYMBOLIC COMMUNICATION?

摘要

One of the driving forces of human research is the question how spokenlanguage, which is thought to be unique to humans, originated and evolved.Researchers quite regularly addressed this question by comparing humancommunicative signals to the systems of communication evolved in otheranimals, especially in one of our closest living relative, the chimpanzee (Pantroglodytes). The majority of research focused on vocal communication. Recentstudies however provide evidence that gestures play an important role in thecommunication of chimpanzees and resemble those of pre-linguistic childrenand just-linguistic human infants in some important ways: they are used asintentional acts, represent a relatively stable part of an individual'scommunicative repertoire, and are clearly learned. Chimpanzees howevermainly use these communicative means as effective procedures in dyadicinteractions to request actions from others (imperatives). Human childrenhowever, commonly use referential gestures, e.g. pointing, which direct theattention of recipients to particular aspects of the environment. The use of thesegestures has been linked with cognitive capacities such as mental stateattribution, because the recipient must infer the signaller's meaning. Until now,referential gestures have been reported only in captive chimpanzees interactingwith their human experimenters and human-raised or language trainedindividuals. It is therefore not clear yet whether these abilities represent naturalcommunication abilities or are byproducts of living in a human enculturedenvironment.