Learning from Communication Versus Observation: Great Apes Ignore Their Observation When It Contradicts Communicatively Transmitted Information

When human infants are intentionally addressed by others, they tend to interpret the information communicated as being relevant to them and worth acquiring. For humans, this attribution of relevance leads to a preference to learn from communication, making it possible to accumulate knowledge over generations. Great apes are sensitive to communicative cues, but do these cues also activate an expectation of relevance? In an observational learning paradigm, we demonstrated how to operate on a device. When apes had the opportunity to choose between an efficient and an inefficient method in the baseline conditions, the majority of them chose the efficient method. However, when the inefficient method was demonstrated in a communicative way, they failed to prioritize efficiency,even though they were equally attentive in both conditions. This suggests that the ostensive demonstration elicited an expectation of relevance that modified apes’ interpretation of the situation, potentially leading to a preference to learn from communication, as human children do.