Cissewski Julia, Luncz Lydia V
Department of Human Behavior, Ecology, and Culture, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.
Technological Primates Research Group, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2021 Dec 24;12:718414. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.718414. eCollection 2021.
Symbolic communication is not obvious in the natural communicative repertoires of our closest living relatives, the great apes. However, great apes do show symbolic competencies in laboratory studies. This includes the understanding and the use of human-provided abstract symbols. Given this evidence for the underlying ability, the apparent failure to make use of it in the wild is puzzling. We provide a theoretical framework for identifying basic forms of symbolic signal use in chimpanzee natural communication. In line with the laboratory findings, we concentrate on the most promising domain to investigate, namely gesture, and we provide a case study in this area. We suggest that evidence for basic symbolic signal use would consist of the presence of two key characteristics of symbolic communication, namely arbitrariness and conventionalization. Arbitrariness means that the linkage between the form of the gesture and its meaning shows no obvious logical or otherwise motivated connection. Conventionalization means that the gesture is shared at the group-level and is thus socially learned, not innate. Further, we discuss the emergence and transmission of these gestures. Demonstrating this basic form of symbolic signal use would indicate that the symbolic capacities revealed by laboratory studies also find their expression in the natural gestural communication of our closest living relatives, even if only to a limited extent. This theoretical article thus aims to contribute to our understanding of the developmental origins of great ape gestures, and hence, arguably, of human symbolic communication. It also has a very practical aim in that by providing clear criteria and by pointing out potential candidates for symbolic communication, we give fieldworkers useful prerequisites for identifying and analyzing signals which may demonstrate the use of great apes' symbolic capacities in the wild.
符号交流在我们现存的近亲——大猩猩的自然交流技能中并不明显。然而，在实验室研究中，大猩猩确实展现出了符号能力。这包括对人类提供的抽象符号的理解和运用。鉴于存在这种潜在能力的证据，它们在野外明显未能利用这一能力就令人费解了。我们提供了一个理论框架，用于识别黑猩猩自然交流中符号信号使用的基本形式。与实验室研究结果一致，我们专注于最有前景的研究领域，即手势，并在此领域提供了一个案例研究。我们认为，基本符号信号使用的证据将包括符号交流的两个关键特征，即任意性和规约性。任意性意味着手势形式与其意义之间的联系没有明显的逻辑或其他动机上的关联。规约性意味着该手势在群体层面是共享的，因此是通过社会学习获得的，而非天生的。此外，我们还讨论了这些手势的出现和传播。证明这种基本形式的符号信号使用将表明，实验室研究揭示的符号能力也在我们现存近亲的自然手势交流中得以体现，即便只是在有限程度上。因此，这篇理论文章旨在增进我们对大猩猩手势发展起源的理解，进而，也可以说是对人类符号交流发展起源的理解。它还有一个非常实际的目标，即通过提供明确的标准并指出符号交流的潜在候选对象，我们为野外工作者提供了有用的前提条件，以便他们识别和分析那些可能表明大猩猩在野外使用符号能力的信号。
