Grammatical gender in the production of single words: some evidence from Greek

The present study investigated the effect of prior grammatical gender information provided by the production of a bare noun on the production of a syntactically unrelated, gender-inflected color adjective. The target language was Greek. A lexical priming task involving picture naming was employed. Participants saw a series of pictures, some in color and some in black-and-white; they had to name a black-and-white picture with the single noun (prime) and a color picture with the appropriately inflected color adjective (target). Prior gender information was shown to affect subsequent production of gender-marked words. The effect was restricted to nouns of one gender class (masculine) only. The implications of these results for the representation and processing of gender in production are discussed.     

Eyetracking for two-person tasks with manipulation of a virtual world

Eyetracking facilities are typically restricted to monitoring a single person viewing static images or prerecorded video. In the present article, we describe a system that makes it possible to study visual attention in coordination with other activity during joint action. The software links two eyetracking systems in parallel and provides an on-screen task. By locating eye movements against dynamic screen regions, it permits automatic tracking of moving on-screen objects. Using existing SR technology, the system can also cross-project each participant’s eyetrack and mouse location onto the other’s on-screen work space. Keeping a complete record of eyetrack and on-screen events in the same format as subsequent human coding, the system permits the analysis of multiple modalities. The software offers new approaches to spontaneous multimodal communication: joint action and joint attention. These capacities are demonstrated using an experimental paradigm for cooperative on-screen assembly of a two-dimensional model. The software is available under an open source license.     

Triggering social interactions: chimpanzees respond to imitation by a humanoid robot and request responses from it

Even the most rudimentary social cues may evoke affiliative responses in humans and promote social communication and cohesion. The present work tested whether such cues of an agent may also promote communicative interactions in a nonhuman primate species, by examining interaction-promoting behaviours in chimpanzees. Here, chimpanzees were tested during interactions with an interactive humanoid robot, which showed simple bodily movements and sent out calls. The results revealed that chimpanzees exhibited two types of interaction-promoting behaviours during relaxed or playful contexts. First, the chimpanzees showed prolonged active interest when they were imitated by the robot. Second, the subjects requested ‘social’ responses from the robot, i.e. by showing play invitations and offering toys or other objects. This study thus provides evidence that even rudimentary cues of a robotic agent may promote social interactions in chimpanzees, like in humans. Such simple and frequent social interactions most likely provided a foundation for sophisticated forms of affiliative communication to emerge.     

Evolutionary roots of intuitive parenting: Maternal competence in chimpanzees

Intuitive parenting behaviours have been shown to be universal in humans and appear to be based on psychobiological preadaptedness. This study is an exploration of the evolutionary roots of intuitive parenting through naturalistic observation of mother chimpanzees' interaction with their very young infants. Maternal competence is demonstrated initially through the behaviours of carrying the newborn infant and allowing the infant to nurse. Very early mother–infant interactions include play, ‘exercise’, cradling and grooming. Chimpanzee mothers also assess their offspring's behavioural state and muscle tone through visual inspections and movement of legs, arms, fingers and toes. Chimpanzee mothers and infants, as early as 2 weeks of age, spend some time in mutual gaze. Neonatal chimpanzees are capable of sustained face-to-face interactions, as these were observed in nursery-reared chimpanzee interactions with human adults; however, it appears that chimpanzee mothers encourage mutual gaze with their infants for only brief durations. Chimpanzees with good maternal competence exhibit sensitive responsivity to infants' communicatory signals. Thus the results of this study support the claim that there are evolutionary and comparative foundations of intuitive parenting evident in the maternal behaviour and maternal competence of chimpanzees.