Perception of pictorial eye gaze by baboons (Papio papio).
Pictorial faces looking left or right were presented to baboons (Papio papio) before the display of a target letter in the left or right hemifield of a monitor screen. Baboons had to provide go or no-go responses taking into account the identity of the target letter. The 1st 6 experiments showed no reliable effect of eye gaze on discrimination speed, using either schematic gazes or pictures of real gazes. Experiment 7 showed that eye gazes facilitated target processing when eye cues were perfect predictors of target location. Findings suggest that baboons do not spontaneously process eye-gaze direction but can learn to do so if the gaze has a predictive value. Implications of these findings on baboons' perspective-taking abilities are discussed.
Center for Research in Cognitive Neurosciences, 31 Chemin Joseph Aiguier, 13402 Marseille, France. fagot@lnf.cnrs-mrs.fr
Joël
J
Fagot
Christine
C
Deruelle
D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D003463:Cues; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005145:Face; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D010215:Papio; D011930:Reaction Time; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*