Pictorial gaze cues do not enhance long tailed macaques’ performance on a computerised object location task

Abstract

The perception of pictorial gaze cues was examined in long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis). A computerised object location task was used to explore whether the monkeys would show faster response time to locate a target when its appearance was preceded with congruent as opposed to incongruent gaze cues. Despite existing evidence that macaques preferentially attend to the eyes in facial images and also visually orient with depicted gaze cues, the monkeys did not show faster response times on congruent trials either in response to schematic or photographic stimuli. These findings coincide with those reported for baboons tested with a similar paradigm in which gaze cues preceded a target identification task (Fagot and Deruelle 2002). When tested with either pictorial stimuli or interactants, non human primates readily follow gaze but do not seem to use this mechanism to identify a target object; there seems to be some mismatch in performance between attentional changes and manual responses to gaze cues on ostensibly similar tasks.