DOI: 10.5061/dryad.tmpg4f5d5
title: Lifespan development of gaze following in wild chimpanzees

description: The ability to follow another’s gaze direction is a foundational skill in
 human cognition that underpins more complex social abilities. Other
 primate species also exhibit a variety of gaze-following behaviors, but
 previous experimental work has focused only on captive populations.
 Studies of cognition in wild animals are crucial to understanding the
 biological context of different psychological processes, as well as to
 characterize developmental change in cognition in animals interacting in
 natural social groups. We therefore conducted field experiments with wild
 chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) ranging from infancy to old
 age in Kibale National Park, Uganda. Following our preregistered protocol
 (https://aspredicted.org/N2D_DT4), chimpanzees observed a human
 demonstrator who either looked up on test trials or down on control trials
 across up to four trials presented on different days. Each trial was video
 recorded in the field and coded by two experienced coders. In each trial,
 we coded whether chimpanzees looked up during the trial, and if they did
 we measured how quickly, calculated how much time they spent looking, and
 whether they looked multiple times. The dataset includes
 individual trial results for 53 individual wild chimpanzees including the
 age and sex of each subject, as well as relevant controls. 
description: # Lifespan development of gaze following in wild chimpanzees Dataset DOI:
 [10.5061/dryad.tmpg4f5d5](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.tmpg4f5d5) ##
 Description of the data and file structure This data set consists of one
 file (.xlsx format) with the data from this study. The file includes a
 data tab with all the data from the task, as well as a key tab where all
 the variables reported in the main data tab are defined (also appended
 below). Wild chimpanzees were tested on gaze-following task where they
 were tested up to four trials at different times. The file includes the
 demographic characteristics of the chimpanzees that participated in the
 task (e.g., their age and sex); the relevant experimental parameters for
 the task (e.g., trial number and condition), and their responses (e.g.,
 gaze following responses and the dynamics of these responses). NA values
 are defined for each variable and indicate that a particular response
 measure was not applicable to that chimpanzee (e.g., if they did not
 produce a gaze following response, their latency to look is blank).
 Detailed methodological procedures are described in the associated paper.
 ### Files and variables #### File:
 Sabbi_etal_chimpanzee_gazeFollowing.xlsx **Description:** Data from a
 field experiment examining patterns of gaze following in wild chimpanzees
 (*Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii).* ##### Variables | Variable |
 Description | | :------------------ |
 :------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | Subject | Anonymized individual identifier assigned to each unique chimpanzee in the study | | Sex | Sex of the subject (Female or Male)  | | Age | Numerical age of the subject in years, calculated on the specific day of that trial (e.g., chimpanzees may have different calculated ages on different trials) | | Cohort | Categorical age: infants under 5 years old, juveniles 5-10 years old, adults 10-25 years, and older adults over 35 years | | Experimenter | Identifier assigned to each unique demonstrator (i.e. the experimenter for that trial; 1 or 2) | | Condition\_Order | Whether the first test for that subject was a Control or a Test trial  | | Trial\_number | Trial number for total sequence of trials in order (1-4) | | Trial\_number\_type | Whether the trial was the first or second trial for that trial type (e.g., 1st or 2nd test trial, 1st or 2nd control trial) | | Condition | Whether the experimenter produced a look up (Test) or a neutral look down (Control)  | | LookYN | Did the chimpanzee look up during the trial? (yes = 1, no = 0)  | | Latency | The latency in seconds to produce a looking response (for trials in which the chimpanzee produced a look upwards; blanks indicate the chimpanzee did not look) | | Total\_Looking | The total duration of looking in seconds (for trials in which the chimpanzee produced a look upwards; blanks indicate the chimpanzee did not look) | | Multiple\_LooksYN | Whether the chimpanzee produced multiple discrete looks (for trials in which the chimpanzee produced a look upwards; 1 = yes, 0 = no, only one look; blanks indicate the chimpanzee did not look) |