Lifespan development of gaze following in wild chimpanzees

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 tri..., , # 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 d...,