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THE EMERGENCE of EYE CONTACT AS an INTERSUBJECTIVE SIGNAL in an INFANT GORILLA: IMPLICATIONS for MODELS of EARLY SOCIAL COGNITION Acción Psicológica, Vol

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THE EMERGENCE of EYE CONTACT AS an INTERSUBJECTIVE SIGNAL in an INFANT GORILLA: IMPLICATIONS for MODELS of EARLY SOCIAL COGNITION Acción Psicológica, Vol Acción Psicológica ISSN: 1578-908X [email protected] Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia España CARLOS GÓMEZ, JUAN THE EMERGENCE OF EYE CONTACT AS AN INTERSUBJECTIVE SIGNAL IN AN INFANT GORILLA: IMPLICATIONS FOR MODELS OF EARLY SOCIAL COGNITION Acción Psicológica, vol. 7, núm. 2, julio-, 2010, pp. 35-43 Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia Madrid, España Available in: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=344030764004 How to cite Complete issue Scientific Information System More information about this article Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal Journal's homepage in redalyc.org Non-profit academic project, developed under the open access initiative 04_Gomez.qxp 30/9/10 16:40 Página 35 JUAN CARLOS GÓMEZ / ACCIÓN PSICOLÓGICA , julio 2010, vol. 7, n. o 2, 35-43. ISSN: 1578-908X 35 THE EMERGENCE OF EYE CONTACT AS AN INTERSUBJECTIVE SIGNAL IN AN INFANT GORILLA: IMPLICATIONS FOR MODELS OF EARLY SOCIAL COGNITION EL SURGIMIENTO DEL CONTACTO OCULAR COMO SEÑAL INTERSUBJETIVA EN UNA CRÍA DE GORILA: IMPLICACIONES PARA LOS MODELOS DE COGNICIÓN SOCIAL TEMPRANA JUAN CARLOS GÓMEZ School of Psychology. University of St.Andrews [email protected] Abstract Introduction This paper argues against both lean and Ever since the beginnings of research on ear - rich interpretations of early social cognition ly social interaction and communication in in - in infants and apes using as an illustration the fants, there has been a theoretical tension be - results of a longitudinal study comparing the tween those willing to explain the complexity emergence of joint attention and tool use pat - uncovered in adult-infant interaction as the re - terns in an infant gorilla. In contrast with tool sult of rich underlying cognitive abilities (e.g., use (where well-formed manipulations result - Bretherton et al., 1981), and those willing to ed in near perfect rates of reward obtention) propose leaner accounts of infant social cogni - the emergence of well-formed acts of commu - tion (e.g., Shatz, 1983). A similar tension exists nication with eye contact not only had no ef - among comparative researchers when trying to fect upon the rewards obtained, but increased explain the complexity of non-human primates the proportion of “explicit denials” of requests. social interaction and the degree of similarity It is argued that this suggests eye contact is between human and non-human social cogni - learned and used as an intersubjective signal tion: some defend lean accounts, others rich ac - of communicative intentionality and not counts of primate social cognition. Paradoxical - through simple associative mechanisms of re - ly it is not infrequent that a lean approach ward contingency detection. However, it is towards non-human animals is accompanied by also argued that rich interpretations of early a rich approach towards human infants social cognition are not needed to explain the (Tomasello et al., 2007). In this paper I build development of communicative and intersub - upon earlier proposals (Gómez, Sarriá, and jective intentions. Tamarit, 1993; Gómez, 2007) to explore a “bal - anced”, intermediate approach to the social cog - nitive skills of infants and non-human primates. Key Words Lean approaches typically try to explain what infants or primates do (e.g., gaze following Intentional communication, eye contact, or pointing behaviours) as simple instances of joint attention, intersubjectivity, tool use, goril - trial and error learning and associations be - las. tween behaviours and outcomes with no or little Artículo recibido: 26/4/2010 Artículo aceptado: 10/6/2010 04_Gomez.qxp 30/9/10 16:40 Página 36 36 JUAN CARLOS GÓMEZ / ACCIÓN PSICOLÓGICA , julio 2010, vol. 7, n. o 2, 35-43 insight into the causal links that connect those fants, reflect complex cognitive skills, including behaviours with their outcomes (other people’s an understanding of what others can see and reactions). For example, the gaze following re - what they can know and ignore. For example, action (looking at the same target as others) has Tomasello et al. (2007) propose that infants use been found to be a universal of primate social pointing in a way essentially similar to how cognition (Gómez, 2005). However, authors like adults do. They attribute to infants an ability to Povinelli and Eddy (1996) suggest that in non- understand the informative and communicative human primates it is either a reflex reaction or a intentions behind their own pointing and the blindly learnt habit devoid of any understanding pointing of others. In support of this interpreta - of the other’s gaze as implying any sort of visual tion they present findings like the following. experience of an object. A similar lean approach When 12 month-old infants point out an inter - was defended by Moore (2008) for gaze follow - esting event to someone else, they are not happy ing in human infants. According to him, infants if the person simply attends, gesticulates or might simply be learning that turning in the emotes to them: they require that the person at - same direction as others usually leads to finding tends to and emotes about the object they are something of interest. No need of invoking early pointing at (Gómez et al., 1983; Tomasello et al., theories of mind or complex social cognition 2007). Moreover, when requesting an object with for explaining this. However, an experiment by a pointing gesture, 12 month-old infants may Moore himself suggests that there is more to not be satisfied if they get the object by chance. gaze following than simple associative learning. For example, if the person looks at the wrong Corkum and Moore (1998), working with 8-9 object and gives them the right one, they typi - month-old infants who had not yet learned to cally insist and repeat their request, as if what follow gaze on their own, tried to teach them they need is to be understood , not just to get a re - gaze following responses with selective rein - ward. Tomasello et al. (2007) argue that results forcement in an experimental setting. A group of like these suggest that infant communication in - children consistently found a reinforcing event volves a sophisticated understanding of commu - if they looked in the same direction as an exper - nicative intentions, including an understanding imenter; however, a second group found the re - of what is jointly known or intended. inforcing event only if they looked in the direc - These same authors defend, however, that tion opposite to where the experimenter looked. non-human communication even among the If gaze following is learned through simple as - great apes, our closest relatives, may be much sociation, this group of children should have simpler. For example, when chimpanzees and learned to look in the direction opposite to the other apes point to request food or objects from adult. However, they were completely unable to others, they might be acting just on the basis of learn this reverse, unnatural contingency, their desire to make others do things without a whereas children in the normal gaze following true grasping of what others understand and group learned easily to follow the gaze of the know, and especially without entering into true adult. Even more surprisingly, children in the joint attention and action. At most, apes may un - reverse contingency group spontaneously derstand that others have individual intentions learned to follow gaze in the natural direction, about objects, but not communicative intentions. despite never being rewarded for doing so. Gaze direction is not just an arbitrary stimulus: there In a commentary on the above paper seems to be something intrinsically directional (Gómez, 2007) I have defended the need to find in gaze that tightly constraints what can be an alternative “balanced” interpretation of what learned and how it is learned. The rules of sim - is involved in early social cognition, both for ple associative learning did not apply here. apes and human infants. I propose that behav - iours like gaze following and pointing can be Rich interpretations posit that behaviours interpreted as involving a mentalistic under - like gaze following and pointing (a more active, standing of behaviour, but one that occurs at intentional way of making others look to or act the level of intentionality , not at the level of un - upon an object), appearing or well established by derstanding the representational mind. In this the end of the second year of life in human in - sense, communicative intentions and shared 04_Gomez.qxp 30/9/10 16:40 Página 37 JUAN CARLOS GÓMEZ / ACCIÓN PSICOLÓGICA , julio 2010, vol. 7, n. o 2, 35-43 37 knowledge need not require complex represen - a zoo nursery setting. One of the findings was tations of the type “I know that you know what I that, among other gestures, the infant gorilla want” “or “we jointly and mutually know X”, developed a set of “contact gestures” consisting but rather representations of aboutness and mu - of taking people by their hand to places or tak - tual aboutness , which, in turn, cannot be ex - ing the hand of people to objects she wanted plained neither in human infants nor in apes as them to manipulate (Gómez, 1989, 1990). This simple associative behaviours. gesture seems to be ideally suited to assess the notion of communication as “social tool use”. In what follows, I will present empirical evi - Since the observational data collected contained dence against lean interpretations of ape com - also observations on the development of tool munication (their use of eye contact and mutual use, it is possible to make a direct comparison attention to regulate interaction with humans), of the emergence of tool use as object manipu - but instead of concluding that ape social behav - lation for problem solving and social commu - iour demands a rich cognitive interpretation, I nicative strategies in similar problem solving will be defending a “balanced” model midway contexts.
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