Departmental Colloquium: Liebal Katja (Freie Universitat Berlin) - Measuring intentionality in great ape gestural communication

Measuring intentionality in great ape gestural communication

Katja Liebal, Freie Universität Berlin, Department of Education and Psychology

Intentionality is a key feature of human language. Therefore, comparative researchers interested in the evolutionary origins of human language dedicated much attention to the communication of other primates, particularly their gestures, to assess whether they also use these signals intentionally. In my talk, I will introduce the criteria commonly used to identify intentional gesture use in nonhuman primates and will discuss their validity and limitations in regard to their suitability as markers of intentional communication. I will focus on 1) the social use of gestures considering aspects such as audience effects and the sender’s adjustment to the recipient’s attentional state and 2) the flexible use of gestures if the sender’s initial communicative attempts fail by addressing the persistence and elaboration of gesture use. Based on this, I propose a tentative set of criteria that may be most appropriate for identifying intentional gestural communication in nonhuman primates.

Keywords: great apes, intentional, flexibility, adjustment to audience