ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2020
Scratching beneath the surface: intentionality in great ape signal production.
Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed.
- When grooming stalls: Assessing communicative repair, negotiation, and progressivity in chimpanzees.iScience · 2026Article
- Utterance evolution: the road to generative, combinatorial communicators.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Review
- Elephant gestural communication during agonistic interactions: repertoire, intentionality, and goals.Animal cognition · 2026Article
- Gestural Sequences in Wild Spider Monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi).American journal of primatology · 2026Article
- Idiosyncratic gesture use in a mother-infant dyad in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) in the wild.Animal cognition · 2024Article
- Evidence for the communicative function of human-directed gazing in 6- to 7-week-old dog puppies.Animal cognition · 2024Article
- An Integrated Perspective of Effort and Perception of Effort.Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.) · 2024Review
- Overcoming bias in the comparison of human language and animal communication.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Great ape interaction: Ladyginian but not Gricean.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Bodies at play: the role of intercorporeality and bodily affordances in coordinating social play in chimpanzees in the wild.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Modeling intentionality in the human brain.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2023Article
- Intentional gestural communication amongst red-capped mangabeys (Cercocebus torquatus).Animal cognition · 2022Article
- Are ape gestures like words? Outstanding issues in detecting similarities and differences between human language and ape gesture.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Review
- Coordinating social action: a primer for the cross-species investigation of communicative repair.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Review
- Island Life: Use of Activity Budgets and Visibility to Evaluate a Multi-Species Within-Zoo Exhibit Move.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Article
- An intentional cohesion call in male chimpanzees of Budongo Forest.Animal cognition · 2022Article
- Inferential Communication: Bridging the Gap Between Intentional and Ostensive Communication in Non-human Primates.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- Exploring the cerebral substrate of voice perception in primate brains.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Review
- What can animal communication teach us about human language?Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Despite important similarities having been found between human and animal communication systems, surprisingly little research effort has focussed on whether the cognitive mechanisms underpinning these behaviours are also similar. In particular, it is highly debated whether signal production is the result of reflexive processes, or can be characterized as intentional. Here, we critically evaluate the criteria that are used to identify signals produced with different degrees of intentionality, and discuss recent attempts to apply these criteria to the vocal, gestural and multimodal communicative signals of great apes and more distantly related species. Finally, we outline the necessary research tools, such as physiologically validated measures of arousal, and empirical evidence that we believe would propel this debate forward and help unravel the evolutionary origins of human intentional communication. This article is part of the theme issue 'What can animal communication teach us about human language?'
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.