What Young Chimpanzees Know About Seeing

Does a young chimpanzee’s gaze subjectively link it to the outside world? Is seeing “about” something to this species? This volume reports the results of 15 studies conducted with chimpanzees and pre-school children. The findings provide little evidence that young chimpanzees understand seeing as a mental event. Even though young chimps spontaneously attend to and follow the visual gaze of others, they simultaneously appear oblivious to the attentional significance of that gaze. This interpretation is consistent with three different possibilities: chimpanzees may experience a delay in psychological development; alternatively, they may possess a different theory of attention, connected subjectively through other behavioural indicators; or the subjective understanding of visual perception may only be present in humans.