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Patterns of hemispheric specialization for a communicative gesture in different primate species
Author(s) -
Meunier Hélène,
Fagard Jacqueline,
Maugard Anaïs,
Briseño Margarita,
Fizet Jonas,
Canteloup Charlotte,
Defolie Charlotte,
Vauclair Jacques
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
developmental psychobiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.055
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1098-2302
pISSN - 0012-1630
DOI - 10.1002/dev.21151
Subject(s) - laterality , primate , gesture , psychology , macaque , nonhuman primate , cognitive psychology , task (project management) , divergence (linguistics) , communication , developmental psychology , evolutionary biology , neuroscience , biology , computer science , artificial intelligence , linguistics , philosophy , management , economics
We review four studies investigating hand preferences for grasping versus pointing to objects at several spatial positions in human infants and three species of nonhuman primates using the same experimental setup. We expected that human infants and nonhuman primates present a comparable difference in their pattern of laterality according to tasks. We tested 6 capuchins, 6 macaques, 12 baboons, and 10 human infants. Those studies are the first of their kind to examine both human infants and nonhuman primate species with the same communicative task. Our results show remarkable convergence in the distribution of hand biases of human infants, baboons and macaques on the two kinds of tasks and an interesting divergence between capuchins' and other species' hand preferences in the pointing task. They support the hypothesis that left‐lateralized language may be derived from a gestural communication system that was present in the common ancestor of macaques, baboons and humans. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc . Dev Psychobiol 55: 662–671, 2013.