GAZE FOLLOWING AND JOINT ATTENTION IN RHESUS-MONKEYS (MACACA-MULATTA)

Gaze and attention direction provide important sources of social infor mation for primates. Behavioral studies show that chimpanzees spontane ously follow human gaze direction. By contrast, non-ape species such a s macaques fail to follow gaze cues. The authors investigated the reac tions of rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) to attention cues of conspec ifics. Two subjects were presented with videotaped images of a stimulu s monkey with its attention directed to 1 of 2 identical objects. Anal ysis of eye movements revealed that both subjects inspected the target (object or position attended by the stimulus monkey) more often than the distracter (nonattended object or position). These results provide evidence that rhesus monkeys follow gaze and use the attention cues o f other monkeys to orient their own attention to objects.