ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2022
Are ape gestures like words? Outstanding issues in detecting similarities and differences between human language and ape gesture.
Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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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.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Gestural Sequences in Wild Spider Monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi).American journal of primatology · 2026Article
- The gestural repertoire of Bwindi mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei): gesture form and frequency of use.Animal cognition · 2025Article
- Chimpanzee's in Black: Visual Search for the Conspecific Body Silhouette by Chimpanzees (Open mind : discoveries in cognitive science · 2025Article
- Idiosyncratic gesture use in a mother-infant dyad in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) in the wild.Animal cognition · 2024Article
- How (and why) languages became more complex as we evolved more prosocial: the human self-domestication view.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- 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
- Toward an evolutionary account of the changes in the human pitch vocal system.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Communicative roots of complex sociality and cognition: preface to the theme issue.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Opinion piece: ape gestures are made intentionally, inviting parallels with human language; but how similar are their gestures to words? Here we ask this in three ways, considering: flexibility and ambiguity, first- and second-order intentionality, and usage in interactive exchanges. Many gestures are used to achieve several, often very distinct, goals. Such apparent ambiguity in meaning is potentially disruptive for communication, but-as with human language-situational and interpersonal context may largely resolve the intended meaning. Our evidence for first-order intentional use of gesture is abundant, but how might we establish a case for the second-order intentional use critical to language? Finally, words are rarely used in tidy signal-response sequences but are exchanged in back-and-forth interaction. Do gestures share this property? In this paper, we examine these questions and set out ways in which they can be resolved, incorporating data from wild chimpanzees. This article is part of the theme issue 'Cognition, communication and social bonds in primates'.
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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.