%0 Journal Article
%T El gesto de se£¿alar: Una llave para la comunicaci¨®n entre especies
%A Elgier
%A Angel Manuel
%A Bentosela
%A Mariana
%J Interdisciplinaria
%D 2009
%I Scientific Electronic Library Online
%X communication between two animals takes place when an external observer can detect changes in the behavior of one of them, in response to certain signs emitted by the other one. the pointing gesture is a key element inside gestural communication. it can be defined as the action that an organism executes, to give a direct indication to other one, regarding a specific objective. this gesture is related to how an organism coordinates the visual attention of another one towards a distant entity. it has two principal functions: as declarative gesture, it implies an action that directs the attention of the receiver to an object or event of interest; as imperative gesture, some type of action is required from the receiver. in this paper, some studies focused on the production and, most of them, on the comprehension of pointing are discussed. regarding the production of communicative cues, primates rarely point in their natural habitats, but captive chimpanzees usually point food out of their reach. there are few studies of communicative production in domestic dogs, and their focus is on the applied value of this ability as in hunting or rescue. this species use body posture, barks and gaze alternation (showing) as communicative cues. on the other hand, the most common test to evaluate whether animals can understand declarative gestures is the object-choice task, which forces subjects to use an indicatory gesture in order to find hidden food. in this test, the subject is given a choice between two possible food locations, usually opaque containers. the experimenter hides food in one of the containers and gives a cue (e.g. pointing, gazing, tapping, etc.) towards the aim container. the subject can choose one of the potential locations, following the human cue. using pointing as a cue in situations of captivity, correct responses were observed in a wide variety of species including capuchin monkeys, orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, dolphins, domestic goats, cats, horses, se
%K pointing
%K interspecific communication
%K domestic dogs
%K learning.
%U http://www.scielo.org.ar/scielo.php?script=sci_abstract&pid=S1668-70272009000200001&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en