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Bonobos assign meaning to food calls based on caller food preferences

Human communication relies heavily on pragmatic competence. Speech utterances are often ambiguous requiring listeners to use interaction history, shared knowledge, presumed intention and other contextual variables to make inferences about a speaker’s meaning. To probe the evolutionary origins of pra...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Shorland, Gladez, Genty, Emilie, Neumann, Christof, Zuberbühler, Klaus
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9200338/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35704564
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0267574
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author Shorland, Gladez
Genty, Emilie
Neumann, Christof
Zuberbühler, Klaus
author_facet Shorland, Gladez
Genty, Emilie
Neumann, Christof
Zuberbühler, Klaus
author_sort Shorland, Gladez
collection PubMed
description Human communication relies heavily on pragmatic competence. Speech utterances are often ambiguous requiring listeners to use interaction history, shared knowledge, presumed intention and other contextual variables to make inferences about a speaker’s meaning. To probe the evolutionary origins of pragmatic competence we tested whether bonobos (Pan paniscus) can make inferences about the type of food available from listening to other group members’ food calls. We trained two group members to either prefer blue or pink chow and demonstrated these preferences to observers. A third group member served as an untrained control. In playback experiments, we broadcast the food calls of a trained demonstrator and the untrained group member to investigate whether subjects were able to infer which coloured chow was most likely available, based on the callers’ trained food preferences or lack thereof. As predicted, when hearing the untrained group member’s calls, subjects did not exhibit a bias, whereas they responded with a significant foraging bias when hearing a trained group member’s calls. These findings suggest that bonobos may take into account the idiosyncratic food preferences of others, although subjects probably differed in what they remembered.
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spelling pubmed-92003382022-06-16 Bonobos assign meaning to food calls based on caller food preferences Shorland, Gladez Genty, Emilie Neumann, Christof Zuberbühler, Klaus PLoS One Research Article Human communication relies heavily on pragmatic competence. Speech utterances are often ambiguous requiring listeners to use interaction history, shared knowledge, presumed intention and other contextual variables to make inferences about a speaker’s meaning. To probe the evolutionary origins of pragmatic competence we tested whether bonobos (Pan paniscus) can make inferences about the type of food available from listening to other group members’ food calls. We trained two group members to either prefer blue or pink chow and demonstrated these preferences to observers. A third group member served as an untrained control. In playback experiments, we broadcast the food calls of a trained demonstrator and the untrained group member to investigate whether subjects were able to infer which coloured chow was most likely available, based on the callers’ trained food preferences or lack thereof. As predicted, when hearing the untrained group member’s calls, subjects did not exhibit a bias, whereas they responded with a significant foraging bias when hearing a trained group member’s calls. These findings suggest that bonobos may take into account the idiosyncratic food preferences of others, although subjects probably differed in what they remembered. Public Library of Science 2022-06-15 /pmc/articles/PMC9200338/ /pubmed/35704564 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0267574 Text en © 2022 Shorland et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Shorland, Gladez
Genty, Emilie
Neumann, Christof
Zuberbühler, Klaus
Bonobos assign meaning to food calls based on caller food preferences
title Bonobos assign meaning to food calls based on caller food preferences
title_full Bonobos assign meaning to food calls based on caller food preferences
title_fullStr Bonobos assign meaning to food calls based on caller food preferences
title_full_unstemmed Bonobos assign meaning to food calls based on caller food preferences
title_short Bonobos assign meaning to food calls based on caller food preferences
title_sort bonobos assign meaning to food calls based on caller food preferences
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9200338/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35704564
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0267574
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