Lamaury Augustine, Cochet Hélène, Bourjade Marie
UMR 5263 Cognition Langues Langage Ergonomie - Laboratoire Travail et Cognition (CLLE-LTC) Maison de la recherche C-616, Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès, 5 allées Antonio Machado, 31058, Toulouse Cedex, France.
Station de Primatologie UPS 846, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Rousset, France.
Anim Cogn. 2019 Jul;22(4):567-575. doi: 10.1007/s10071-017-1111-9. Epub 2017 Jul 10.
Joint attention is a core ability of human social cognition which broadly refers to the coordination of attention with both the presence and activity of social partners. In both human and non-human primates, joint attention can be assessed from behaviour; gestures and gaze alternation between the partner and a distal object are standard behavioural manifestations of joint attention. Here we examined the acquisition of joint attention in olive baboons as a function of their individual experience of a human partner's attentional states during training regimes. Eleven olive baboons (Papio anubis) were observed during their training to perform food-requesting gestures, which occurred either by (1) a human facing them (face condition), or (2) by a human positioned in profile who never turned to them (profile condition). We found neither gestures nor gaze alternation were present at the start of the training but rather developed over the training period. Only baboons in the face condition showed an increase in the number of gaze alternations, and their gaze pattern progressively shifted to a coordinated sequence in which gazes and gestures were coordinated in time. In contrast, baboons trained by a human in profile showed significantly less coordination of gazes with gestures but still learned to request food with their gestures. These results suggest that the partner's social attention plays an important role in the acquisition of visual joint attention and, to a lesser extent, in gesture learning in baboons. Interspecific interactions appear to offer rich opportunities to manipulate and thus identify the social contexts in which socio-communicative skills develop.
共同注意是人类社会认知的一项核心能力，广义上是指注意力与社会伙伴的在场及活动之间的协调。在人类和非人类灵长类动物中，共同注意都可以通过行为来评估；伙伴与远处物体之间的手势和目光交替是共同注意的标准行为表现。在此，我们研究了橄榄狒狒共同注意的习得情况，将其作为它们在训练过程中对人类伙伴注意力状态的个体体验的函数。在11只橄榄狒狒（东非狒狒）接受训练以做出食物请求手势的过程中，对它们进行了观察。这些训练出现以下两种情况：（1）人类面对它们（正面条件），或者（2）人类侧身站立且从不转向它们（侧面条件）。我们发现，在训练开始时，既没有出现手势也没有目光交替，而是在训练期间逐渐形成的。只有处于正面条件下的狒狒目光交替次数增加，并且它们的目光模式逐渐转变为一种协调的序列，即目光和手势在时间上相互协调。相比之下，由侧身站立的人类训练的狒狒，其目光与手势的协调性明显较差，但它们仍然学会了用手势请求食物。这些结果表明，伙伴的社会注意力在视觉共同注意的习得中起着重要作用，在狒狒的手势学习中也起到较小程度的作用。种间互动似乎提供了丰富的机会来进行操控，从而确定社会交往技能得以发展的社会背景。
