Social interactions among bonobos – pointing gestures and pantomime, too, are deployed in communication. Credit: LuiKotale Bonobo Project/ Zana Clay

Pointing and pantomime are important components of human communication but so far evidence for referential communication in animals is limited. Observations made by researchers Pamela Heidi Douglas and Liza Moscovice of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, make important contributions to this research topic: To solve social conflicts female bonobos invite other females to engage in a socio-sexual behaviour by using pointing gestures and mimicking hip swings. This observation raises new questions about the evolution of referential communication and human language.

One important feature of human language is the ability to use arbitrary vocal and gestural signals to symbolically represent or refer to objects, actions or events. Two examples of symbolic gestural communication are pointing, which directs someone else’s attention to an external object in the environment, and pantomime, or acting out parts of actions to communicate desires or goals even in the absence of the relevant objects.

It has long been believed that forms of referential gesturing, such as pointing, and forms of iconic gesturing, such as pantomime, are unique to humans. In a recent study of wild bonobos at the Luikotale field site in the Democratic Republic of Congo, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology documented regular use of a form of pointing and pantomime. During their three-year study, Pamela Heidi Douglas and Liza Moscovice observed that the gestures were always produced in the context of socio-sexual behaviour between females. Female sexual behaviour serves to reduce social tension and promote cooperation. The gestures used by the females are notable in that they appear to be not only intentional, but also referential and potentially iconic, since they communicate specific information about the desired goal.

The majority of gestures occurred in feeding contexts, and led to socio-sexual interactions between the gesturer and the recipient. Following socio-sexual interactions, the gesturer and partner were more likely to stay near each other and to feed together compared with rare situations when females rejected the gestural requests for sexual interactions. This suggests that female bonobos use referential and iconic gesturing to enhance communication in contexts in which behavioural coordination and cooperation are necessary.

The observed gestures have obvious parallels with human pointing and pantomime in both form and function and the results of this research, published in Scientific Reports, challenge the current view that such gestures are unique to humans. What remains to be explored is whether bonobos have mental representations when they produce these gestures, and whether females who respond to gestures understand the referential or iconic content of the signals.

Is your dog overwhelmed with joy anytime you walk through the door? There’s a scientific reason behind their excitement, a new study shows, and it’s not just because you feed them.

Researchers at Emory University used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan dogs’ brains for activity when they were shown images of dog faces, human faces and ordinary objects.

The dogs’ temporal lobes lit up “significantly more” when presented with the faces than with the objects. These findings suggest that dogs may recognize both human and dog faces.

Facial recognition causes dog brains to activate in the the same areas as in monkey and human brains, the study found. This is separate from the “reward areas” that would be triggered by anticipation of food.

“What we’re finding with the imaging work is that dogs love their humans-and not just for food,” researcher Gregory Berns told io9. “They love the company of humans simply for its own sake.”

“The existence of a face-selective region in temporal dog cortex opens up a whole range of new questions to be answered about their social intelligence,” the researchers explained, such as whether dogs can understand different facial expressions and whether they can read body language.

This isn’t the first time scientists have explored what makes dogs’ tails wag with excitement when reunited with their owners. A January study that Berns was also involved in found that dogs have a positive reaction to the scent of familiar humans compared with other smells, even those of other dogs.

The results of that study “suggested that not only did the dogs discriminate that scent [of familiar humans] from the others, they had a positive association with it.”

A 2013 behavioral study found that dogs can show when they’re happy to see their owners by lifting their eyebrows. Their left eyebrow went up when they saw their respective owners, the study found. They didn’t have this reaction for other things that may excite them, such as attractive toys.

Editors-in Chief: David Matsumoto, PhD, Hyisung C. Hwang, PhD, and Mark G. Frank, PhD

The Authors of Nonverbal Communication: Science and Applications

The APA Handbook of Nonverbal Communication provides scholarly reviews of state-of-the-art knowledge in the areas of nonverbal communication and nonverbal behaviors. It includes an entire section devoted to new and improved methodologies and technologies that allow for the recording, capture, and analysis of nonverbal behaviors. The primary audience for the book is researchers in the area, as well as by students in graduate-level classes on nonverbal communication or behavior.

The handbook is organized around four broad themes, each of which led to a different section in this volume:

The first concerns the history of the field and includes two chapters providing an overview and history of the area, all written by senior researchers with many years of experience.
The second concerns the factors of influence of nonverbal communication and encompasses the main theoretical and conceptual frameworks within which research on nonverbal communication occurs.
The third theme presents the separate sources of nonverbal communication and behavior and includes chapters on the physical environment, appearance and physiognomy, olfactics and odor, facial expressions, voice, gesture, eye behavior and gaze, and postures, gait, proxemics, and haptics. This section also includes a chapter on nonverbal communication in nonhuman primates.
Finally, the fourth theme concerns advances in research methodologies, and includes chapters on the methods for measuring and analyzing facial expressions, voice, gesture, eye behavior, olfactics, body movements, and nonverbal sensitivity.

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